Pictured are St. Marys residents Dan and Cindy Dollinger along with their seven children. The Dollinger family recently contributed to Voices of Our Region, an audio history project chronicling how disabilities have impacted families in western Pennsylvania.

By Becky Polaski

Cindy and Dan Dollinger recently participated in Voices of Our Region, an audio history project chronicling how disabilities have impacted families in western Pennsylvania.

Voices of Our Region is comprised of a series of interviews conducted by Judith Barricella, director of the Allegheny County Department of Human Services Disability Connection, Athena Aardweg, and Tony Buba.

Barricella explained that the idea for the project came about in 2007 when Pittsburgh 250, an initiative celebrating the 250th birthday of the region, was accepting proposals to fund oral histories.

"Although they funded a number of oral histories, they did not fund ours," explained Barricella. "The FISA Foundation was kind enough to fund our proposal to do the oral history. The stories of people with disabilities are sort of left behind. When you hear about people with disabilities you either hear of a tragedy or that some sports star has gone to visit them or something like that. We really wanted to highlight the triumphs and the struggles that people with disabilities have gone through. I think that what we discovered is that people with disabilities are resilient. They have triumphed over the hand they've been dealt. It was wonderful."

Fliers were sent out asking for individuals to share their stories and a large response was received.

"We had more people call us than we could interview. At some point we had to make a cut off of recording," said Barricella.

Area residents Cindy and Dan Dollinger were one of the families chosen to be interviewed for the project.

"I went down to Pittsburgh to interview with Judy and two other people, speaking to them about our family experience with disabilities because we have a number of family members that have disabilities," explained Cindy Dollinger.

A total of 57 interviews were conducted for the project, though only 22 are currently featured on the two disc DVD set.

"Our family was included on the DVD," noted Dollinger. "I have donated one of the DVDs to the library so anybody that would be interested in viewing that has access to it. It is an audio history, but on the DVD they have pictures to go with it. It's not a movie, but nevertheless there are still visuals to go with it."

Barricella explained that she hoped additional funding would be found to allow all 57 interviews to be put onto DVDs.

The original transcripts and interviews are going to be held at the Carnegie Library in Pittsburgh for people to access for conducting research or if they simply would like to listen to them. Additionally, all of the interviews and their transcripts will eventually be found online at www.voicesofourregion.org.

Barricella added that there is a lot that people can learn from listening to the interviews.

"Some of the things that people have gone through haven't changed in 40 years, which we need to change," said Barricella. "People shouldn't be having the same struggles today as they did 40 years ago. So we're looking at that and we're seeing where we can possibly make life a little better and where we think the government ought to put some focus."

She added that she hoped people who view Voices of Our Region come away understanding the people with disabilities are no different than anyone else.

"They have a few more challenges perhaps, but we all need to be considered part of the community. What we need to do is learn," said Barricella. "We need to learn from the past so that we don't keep repeating the same mistakes."

The Dollinger family's interview is currently one of those available on the Voices of Our Region website.

Dan and Cindy Dollinger are also currently participating in an advocacy training for parents of children with disabilities in the Early Intervention program. This is called C2P2 EI which stands for Confidence and Competence, Parents in Policymaking for the Early Intervention program.

"Dan and I strongly encourage parents suspecting that their child may have a developmental delay to contact Early Intervention for an evaluation," said Cindy Dollinger. "It is free of charge. Their number is 772-8111. Early Intervention is vital to the future successes of children who have different abilities."

The Dollinger family currently resides in St. Marys. Daniel owns Dollingers' Home Improvements, Inc. and specializes in interior residential remodeling. Cindy does office management for the business. The Dollinger children are enrolled in the Saint Marys area public schools and enjoy using their talents through a variety of activities including Pigtail Softball, Little League, April School of Dance, scouting, Life Teen, Nicholas Sinibaldi concert band and many other instrumental bands and choral groups.

The Dollinger's are also active members of Sacred Heart Parish.