Kirk Coakley of Boca Raton with his Sumi-e ink paintings of bamboo and bonsai. Coakley’s work will be part of the Very Special Arts Fair in Boynton Beach this month. Mary Thurwachter/The Coastal Star
Related story: Very Special art show commemorates World Down Syndrome Day
By Mary Thurwachter
Twenty years ago, Kirk Coakley and his friend were riding bikes in eastern Boca Raton when a van came crashing into him as he waited to cross the highway.
Doctors told his parents he wouldn’t make it through the night.
“I looked right into the doctors eyes and pointed my finger at him,” Kirk’s mother, Ruth Coakley, a devout Catholic, remembered. “I told him ‘you don’t know the power of prayer and you don’t know my son.’ ”
Kirk was 13 at the time and had already shown a strong interest in art and music, his mother said. The crash left him with a traumatic brain injury that required extensive rehabilitation.
He can’t walk or talk and uses a wheelchair to get around.
But Kirk, 33, still enjoys painting and will exhibit some of his artwork during the Very Special Arts Fair at the Gold Coast Down Syndrome organization’s resource center this month. He isn’t able to use his right hand and has limited use of his left hand, which he uses to paint.
Very Special Arts of Florida-Palm Beach County helped him find a way to communicate again through art, his mother said.
“After his accident, the slightest form of communication spoke volumes,” she said. “A squeeze of the hand, a blink of his eyes, or a wiggle of a toe. Kirk had lost his voice, but not his will to communicate.”
He went through years of speech therapy. “We worked out our own creative ways of understanding each other,” Ruth Coakley said. “We use hand signals when we ask questions and he speaks volumes with a laugh or a look.”
But when Kirk attended one of the VSA programs at the Morikami Museum, a new avenue of communication became clear.
“Kirk and I watched the instructor work in Sumi-e ink as she painted bamboo,” Coakley said. “As Kirk watched her, his eyes widened and a smile grew on his face. I don’t think I realized it at the time, but I really think it was then he believed that expression through artwork could be part of his life again.
“Kirk’s voice grew with his desire to continue creating artwork, and the VSA played a crucial role in allowing us to reach this once improbable goal,” she said.
Today, examples of Kirk’s sumi-e drawings, as well as colorful florals and abstract paintings fill his home.
Others will be on display at the VSA art show and sure to inspire others.
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