By Rita McInerney

Cindy is 33 and starting her first job. Recently, during a training session at the fast food restaurant that hired her, she took a giant step.

“All my life people have been saying to me, ‘I’ll do that for you,’” she said. “Today, for the first time, I was able to say ‘I’ll do that for you.’”

Such glorious moments are Dorothy Miller’s best reward. For the past three years, through People Making Progress, Inc., she has been helping young adults with disabilities develop the skills needed to hold a job and live on their own.

PMP is a non-profit agency located on the ground floor of a Tucker office building. Cindy, a pretty blonde with soft, clear speech, is a trainee. In her first job, as a hostess at Chick-Fil-A, she will serve the public with skills and confidence gained through the program.

Ms. Miller began working with children with disabilities in the 1960s and is the adoptive mother of eleven, eight living. She is determined that young people, once out of school, aren’t left to vegetate in front of the television set.

“Many kids develop severe behavioral problems with nothing to do but sit around.”

The state spends a good deal of money seeing that children with disabilities are educated, she concedes, but once out of school the outlook for them fades. State vocational rehabilitation counselors are hard put to handle too-heavy caseloads.

“Everyone who leaves school needs a job,” she believes. “But you can’t take these kids, put them in a job and just leave them.” She helps a lot of young people the system has failed.

“We’ve got to change the attitude of the world about people with disabilities. Many of them get attention and love when they are young. That attention has to continue.”

William, a PMP trainee working in the laundry at the Bradbury Suites at Northlake, had been at home for several years after high school. Then his mother was killed in an accident. His brothers and sisters worried about his future.

About two years ago, a religious educator, Toni Miralles, referred him to her friend and mentor, Dorothy Miller. Mrs. Miralles has an active ministry to young people with disabilities at St. Jude’s in Sandy Springs that reaches out to families from around the Atlanta area.

Now, through PMP, “William has a whole new life. He’s so much more social, more aware of what’s going on in the world,” Mrs. Miralles observes.

He is one of six trainees who staff the hotel laundry seven days a week. Two job coaches supervise constantly and Ms. Miller calls in frequently.

Some parents, she says, don’t want their children to work on weekends. But she tries to make them realize that they have to make a life for themselves “before the parents are gone.”

The PMP staff works closely with parents who find it hard to accept that their son or daughter should have every chance at independent living.

“Parents have to be behind us,” Ms. Miller insists. She is always pleased to find fathers talking an interest in their offsprings’ future.

A lot of affirmation goes into PMP training. Young people are taught to be neat and clean and are praised for their accomplishments.

Reid is handsome and polite, neat as a pin in his coordinated sports shirt and trousers. At first, working as a messenger, he had difficulty getting where he had to be and remembering what he had to do. A kindly supervisor at the printery worked with PMP on his problem. They found making up a daily, detailed list for him made all the difference.

Now, “Reid has wonderful days,” the supervisor reports.

The young man had lived with his sister for three years. “Now he is living out in the community, has a part-time job and helps us,” Ms. Miller is proud to say.

Activity is constant at the center. Young people come and go. Parents and job coaches bring in the wheelchair-bound and others needing a ride. Some are to work in –house, others are reporting in before being driven to their job sites.

At tables and work counters, young men and women are busy pasting labels on mailings, assembling wooden games, packing styrofoam cups in clear plastic sleeves.

Cartons holding work to be done are stacked high along the wall. A loading dock in one corner eases delivery and shipping.

Chris Miller, 21, is training at Chick-Fil-A. He comes back to the center with John Callahan, a young job coach with a friendly, helpful way about him. Chris, apron in hand, is brimming over with his success in filleting chicken. He is looking forward to washing dishes the next day.

Ms. Miller is realistic about her trainees’ capabilities. Some “can’t be put in a public situation” and will have to work out of public view.

For others, it is “too much to start out working eight hours. When you put them on for four hours, they learn better and don’t get tired.”

She must be alert to how they respond to their work. “Is it a good place? Do they come to work on time? Can they heat their own lunch?”

They learn by doing, and in the process find out a lot about themselves and the world she is helping them feel comfortable in.

She expects a lot from the trainees. Two boys now working on their own in the laundry at Bradbury Suites in Norcross “fear Dorothy next to God” she allows with a grin. She visits each work site frequently “and unannounced.”

“We need more jobs to do each month. We’re always looking for different ones. I read the entire want ad section every Sunday and make a lot of telephone calls” in constant search for new work for the young trainees.

There are 24 now enrolled. A group of 15 will start soon. If a young person is still in school, he or she can enroll for the summer. “We try and get them while they’re still in school,” she says. Eighteen of the 24 now in training have either been placed or will shortly be placed in a job.

Ages range from 18 to 53. One man, 49, had been at home all his life. Then his mother died and there was no one to care for him. A brother called PMP and he joined the program.

Another man, 53, had been institutionalized for 40 years before entering the program. Now he is working in a hotel laundry with very little supervision and living on his own.

Laundry work is one of the best jobs because “it’s really important to be precise.” Her young people, Dorothy Miller admits, “are not real good at anything that changes constantly.”

She has lots of ideas on entry-level jobs trainees could fill. Have them go into marketing company that does a lot of surveys to open and arrange the mail; team a wheelchair-bound young adult “with brains with another one with legs” for one job.

One of her eight children, Tmeeka, 22, is deaf but works very well in the hotel laundry. “Everything she does is so precise. I wish we could make use of her as a mother’s helper. What a blessing she could be.” That’s what she’s always been at home, her loving mother says.

Two of Ms. Miller’s sons died in less than a year. Aaron, who had spina bifida, died at home on Feb. 8 of this year after being sick for almost a year. He would have been 20 on March 4. Jody, 16, died in March, 1987.

For Ms. Miller, it’s a “constant battle, a constant effort, to get enough money to keep the center going.” The annual budget is approximately $100,000. Two weeks ago the bank balance was $90.

“My dream is to have a scholarship fund. Individuals, businesses or organizations could contribute $1,200 to cover a trainee for six months or a year or as long as it takes.” It would be a personalized relationship with donors given picture and files on their trainees.

Once placed in a job the trainee remains a client of the center with staff members making on-job visits weekly, monthly or as needed.

Dorothy Miller has other dreams. One is to offer low to moderately priced services to elderly still able to live at home but no longer able to cook or clean for themselves. She would like to offer them laundry and yard work as well.

Her young people could work as a supervised team or alone, depending upon the size of the home. “It’s a simple thing we could provide, and a service more in demand as the number of elderly grows.

Yet another dream “is to have supported living housing, either an apartment or a home,” and recreation along with the employment training for young adults.

“Some disabled need group homes where all their needs can be met. Others can be on their own.” Her oldest son, Phillip, 23, just moved from the family home in Holy Cross parish to a small apartment. He still needs help with banking and food shopping, his mother says.

PMP is open to young people 14 and over who have retardation, learning disabilities, autism, behavior disorders, are emotionally disturbed, hearing or vision impaired, or are wheelchair-bound.

With her own brood, Dorothy Miller early on learned that “There are a lot of special things about our kids…Disability doesn’t make them any less a person. They have goals and needs like everyone else.”

With the help of a dedicated staff, she is enabling young people to find out they can have their lives, can have goals.

Editor’s Note: Anyone interested in Helping PMP with work or contributions, or seeking more information about the program may call Ms. Miller at 723-1848.