“It’s easy to get involved with Miracle League when you have children with special needs,” Hopkins said. The Hopkins’ children began participating in Miracle League in Rockdale County - years before its beginnings in Newton County, he said. “My family lived out there and I worked out here during the week and I went out there on the weekend until we could legally bring it back here to the state of Georgia.” “This (NCWSA) board allowed me to commute back and forth every week from Denver to here,” Hopkins said. Gia family to travel to Colorado for access to medical marijuana to treat Michala’s seizures she suffered from the condition. “We were always the marvel of the genetics teams at Egleston and places where we were,” he said. It only affects about 1,000 girls worldwide, he said. She also is essentially a medical miracle by living to age 24 with Aicardi syndrome, a rare condition that caused her brain to develop without individual left and right sides. Michala is a 23-year cancer survivor who lost her leg at age 1 to the disease. Two others have died after both suffered from forms of mitochondrial disease, including son, Abe, 6, and daughter, Mary Elizabeth, 21, who died three months apart. Hopkins and wife, Kelli, have one daughter with special needs, Michala, and one daughter, UGA student Marlee, without any medical conditions.
“When you’re a buddy or a health coach or you take time just to show up and watch them - they just want somebody to see them.” “I get more of a blessing than I would ever give back to them. “They really take it just as serious as all the healthy children,” he said. “To me it was always a joy to see the others that were less severely disabled that could actually move, walk, talk and run, and how much joy they got out of it,” Hopkins said. “Our kids are non-verbal and they’re wheelchair-bound,” he said, in reference to his own children. The league’s field is designed for use by players who may be confined to wheelchairs or others with mobility issues.
Hopkins, who is director of the Newton County Water & Sewerage Authority (NCWSA), said it was a “joy” to see disabled players get their chances to play the game at Newton County’s Miracle League complex at City Pond Park in Covington. The chairman of the Friends of the Miracle League committee has had a personal reason for leading the charge to maintain the county-owned facility that was specially built for its unique players - he’s the father of three special needs children.
By TOM Hopkins says he is just one of many trying to provide a place for kids with disabilities to enjoy the great American pastime in Newton County.
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