Raising a child with special needs and cognitive delays teaches you to appreciate better—and find cause for celebration in—the many small victories of daily life.
Riding a bike, hiking to the top of Stone Mountain, learning to swim—each accomplishment, measured against a different standard, can feel almost Olympian.
I say this to preface that when our children and adult family members alike achieve significant milestones, those moments can warrant community-wide celebration. I’ll come back to that in a moment.
During the late 1970s in DeKalb County, a young special education teacher, part-time realtor, and county commissioner met a distressed mother whose son, Barry Glazer, had educational and disability needs that were then poorly met by DeKalb County Public Schools.
The massive Veterans Administration (VA) campus on Clairmont Road in Decatur—near the county seat and backing up to Lullwater Park and the Emory University president’s residence—has not always been there. The lake at Lullwater was once the City of Decatur’s waterworks reservoir; remnants of that system can still be found in nearby Medlock Woods.
The VA previously operated a smaller facility on Peachtree Road, in what is now Brookhaven. Mrs. Glazer found an ally in special educator and county commissioner Liane Levetan, who saw both hope and opportunity in the then-abandoned federal facility. Through persistence and persuasion, Levetan convinced the VA to transfer the closed campus to the county at no cost.
Shortly after, while on vacation with her husband Phil in Miami Beach, Levetan spotted world champion boxer Muhammad Ali at the Fontainebleau, dining with his family.
Never shy about introducing herself, she approached Ali and discussed the envisioned services center back home in Atlanta, asking whether he would consider supporting a bond referendum to renovate the facility. In less time than it takes a referee to count out one of Ali’s former opponents, he was in.
The question became how to capture that support. Phil was sent to a nearby Radio Shack and returned with a cassette recorder. “The Greatest” delivered a powerful endorsement urging support for services for those striving to lead productive, independent lives.
Levetan, ever the strategist and vote counter, understood the resonance of Ali’s voice in a rapidly growing Black population in DeKalb County’s suburbs. She and Phil returned to Atlanta with the recording, and the radio ad helped the bond referendum pass decisively. The Barry Glazer Center soon opened and, under various names and iterations, operated at that Peachtree Road site until the mid-2020s.
Fast-forward to the present: the City of Brookhaven sought to expand its green space and parks, particularly Brookhaven Park along Peachtree Road, just a few hundred yards from its City Centre development.
While that project was underway, Councilmember Madeleine Simmons led negotiations with DeKalb County to secure rights to the Peachtree frontage still owned by the county, and then worked with Claratel—the nonprofit operator of DeKalb’s Community Service Board (CSB)—on a relocation plan. Brookhaven committed $5 million to support Claratel’s move to a new facility designed to serve its clients better.
Claratel used the funding to relocate and expand into an underutilized DeKalb Recovery Center facility on Winn Way in Decatur, near Emory Decatur Hospital (formerly DeKalb General and later DeKalb Medical Center). The area is also home to a cluster of medical offices, DeKalb’s Crisis Center, and the county’s Public Health Department.
Planning for the new Claratel Center, scheduled to open in early 2027, included extensive input from parents and families. The facility will feature physical and occupational therapy spaces, a cafeteria, a quiet room, a client café for job training, and a model apartment designed to teach independent living skills.
It did not escape notice that Levetan, Simmons, Glazer, and DeKalb CEO Lorraine Cochran-Johnson each played a role in shaping and supporting this forward-looking effort—suggesting that women in our community not only know better, but, with collaboration over competition, often do better as well.
I am confident this new DeKalb County Community Access Center will open doors to opportunity for thousands. And by almost any definition, that is a significant win on Winn Way.