Public Employee Press

Miracle on 48th Street


By JANE LaTOUR

Emergency Medical Technician Juliet Smith found help for her autistic daughter Jada on the back of a horse.

"Riding and controlling the horse has given her a sense of confidence and self-esteem that has boosted her willingness to take on other challenges, such as raising her hand in school," said Smith, a Local 2507 member who works nights out of Station 54 in Laurelton, Queens.

Smith has four daughters; twins Jada and SeArah are 10. Seeking ways to cope constructively with Jada's autism, Smith enrolled her five years ago at the New York Therapeutic Riding Center, a loving community of caring, dedicated volunteers and professionals.

In the Saturday classes at the Chateau Stables on Manhattan's West 48th Street, Jada has mastered skills from cleaning hooves to mounting and riding the horses. She graduated from the small Shetland pony, Spanky, to the much larger retired police horse, Murphy. Jada and the other children in the program - some with spina bifida, some with cerebral palsy, others with autism - learn to overcome their fears, sit atop the horses and canter around the stable.

Jada feeds Murphy carrots and apples and even teaches Juliet to overcome her own fear and pet the horse. "Jada has really progressed. She listens to all the instructions and she loves the horses," said volunteer Mary Gentile, the sister of former Local 1070 President Michael Gentile, now retired.

Stable owners Gloria McGill and her daughter "donate the use of the ­facilities, the horses and the staff," said Center Director Richard Brodie, who holds everything together with inspiration and love for the mission and calls the stable "the miracle on 48th Street." The miracle occurs over and over as children start out timorous and frightened and grow into riders who hate to climb off the horses.

"Many autistic children have difficulty communicating verbally, but when Jada learned that she could tell the horse what to do nonverbally, it was like a light switched on in her brain," said Juliet.