Dr. Frank Hayden, the founder of Special Olympics, outside a retirement home in Oakville, Ont. in June, 2018.J.P. MOCZULSKI/The Globe and Mail
In the early 1960s, Frank Hayden had a job interview for a researcher position at the University of Toronto’s School of Physical and Health Education.
Dr. Hayden, who died Saturday at the age of 96, had obtained exercise science, psychology and sports program-related master’s and doctoral degrees from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. His future boss at the University of Toronto asked him to lead a research project on the physical fitness and capabilities of intellectually disabled youngsters. With Dr. Hayden’s approval, the U of T could obtain a Rotary Club grant that would pay half his salary. Even if he refused, the researcher job was his.
Dr. Hayden demurred. He spent two days at his university’s library probing the field of intellectual disabilities and physical fitness, discovering that research was scarce.
“I figured that I would become an instant expert and that I had a blank sheet,” Dr. Hayden told Jeremy Freeborn for an article published by The Canadian Encyclopedia.
By taking on the project, Dr. Hayden set the stage for his decades of involvement with Special Olympics. The international sports organization now serves 5.6 million athletes of all ages with intellectual disabilities in more than 170 countries.
He first helped the Kennedy family establish Special Olympics in the U.S. after Canada rejected his efforts. He then partnered with broadcaster Harry (Red) Foster to launch Special Olympics Canada before leading the group’s global expansion.
For his contributions, Dr. Hayden received numerous honours, including induction into Canada’s Sports Hall of Fame (2019) and Canada’s Walk of Fame (2024), and several honorary degrees. He was named an officer of the Order of Canada in 1999 and promoted to companion in 2022.
Dr. Hayden is invested as a companion of the Order of Canada by former governor general Michaëlle Jean, on behalf of Gov. Gen. Mary Simon, at Rideau Hall in Ottawa in November, 2022.Justin Tang/The Canadian Press
His proudest honour was having a Burlington, Ont., high school named after him (2013), according to his family.
“Many people talk about the transformative nature of sport – Dr. Frank was a living example of that concept,” retired Olympic swimmer Mark Tewksbury said.
Mr. Tewksbury began decades of involvement with Special Olympics after meeting Dr. Hayden during a Special Olympics breakfast gala in 1992. The meeting rekindled Mr. Tewksbury’s joy in sports after the stripping of sprinter Ben Johnson’s 1988 gold medal had tarnished the Canadian Olympic movement. Mr. Tewksbury has fulfilled board roles and founded a champions network for high-level Special Olympians while participating in many events and projects with Dr. Hayden.
“What I loved about Frank is, is when I would talk about the joy and spirit of Special Olympics, Frank would always bring me back to the athleticism,” Mr. Tewksbury said. “These are athletes, and I just loved how he brought a community to sport, and just wanted them to learn the skills and be on a high-performance athlete pathway, if they were so inclined, just like a traditional athlete would in the regular sport system. He loved Special Olympics, but he loved it because of sport, not because it was a feel-good and [because of] the spirit of it.”
Mr. Tewksbury and Glenn MacDonell, the retired CEO of Special Olympics Ontario, said Dr. Hayden changed the lives of millions of people with intellectual disabilities worldwide by enabling them to participate fully in sport.
Special Olympics could have taken on many different forms if not for Dr. Hayden’s “bullheaded” insistence that Special Olympics would have to be centred around competition, Mr. MacDonell said.
“I don’t think, even with all the money and all the fanfare that the Kennedys could bring to the table, that it ever would have crossed all the boundary lines it crossed without Frank’s persistence that it would need to be [about] sport,” Mr. MacDonell said. “Sport would be the thing that would be the same in Africa as it would be in Vancouver.”
While building Special Olympics into a lasting movement, Dr. Hayden conducted research that inspired many studies. Early on, he showed that individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities could compete and excel in sports, Jonathan Weiss, a York University professor, told The Globe and Mail in 2018.
“At the time, the prevailing attitude was one of exclusion – that people with intellectual disabilities could not and should not engage in these activities,” Dr. Weiss said.
As a result of Dr. Hayden’s work, Special Olympics has become a thought leader in many of today’s programs for children and for adults, the York University professor said, with or without disabilities.
Dr. Hayden looks through a book of wishes from the Kennedy family given to when when he founded the Special Olympics 50 years ago.J.P. MOCZULSKI/The Globe and Mail
“Dr. Hayden’s research helped us get to where we are today,” Dr. Weiss said.
Francis (Frank) Joseph Hayden was born in Windsor, Ont., on Jan. 11, 1930. He was the younger of two sons born to Joseph Hayden and Ethel Hayden (née Castwood).
Joseph, originally from Ireland, immigrated to Canada after serving in the First World War and enduring several years as a prisoner of war, held by the Germans. He worked in security and factories, mainly in St. Catharines. Ethel, from England, worked as a church cleaner and served as president of a seniors’ centre.
Growing up in St. Catharines, Frank developed a keen interest in sports, competing as a wrestler and becoming a lifelong runner.
As part of his special U of T research project, he studied the physical fitness of intellectually disabled students at Beverley School, a Toronto elementary school for children with developmental or physical disabilities. Bucking academics’ exclusionary mindset, he demonstrated that developmentally disabled children’s poor physical fitness stemmed from a lack of exercise rather than their mental-health challenges.
“We found we could improve their fitness and health,” Dr. Hayden told The Globe in 2018.
In 1964, he published his findings, complete with lesson plans, in a book that sold 50,000 copies. He sought to establish Special Olympics in Canada but could not gather the necessary political and financial support. However, Eunice Kennedy Shriver, a sister of then-U.S. president John F. Kennedy, and her husband, Sargent Shriver, were then running summer camps for developmentally delayed children and became aware of Dr. Hayden’s research. Dr. Hayden visited the Shrivers and sent them more information, including his unsuccessful proposal for a two-year Canadian Special Olympics program that would have culminated in 1967, in conjunction with Canada’s 100th birthday, at the National Centennial Games in Toronto. The Shrivers sought to hire Dr. Hayden. But he initially resisted their persistent requests to move south because he had moved to the University of Western Ontario by then.
“They kept calling me,” he recalled in the interview with The Canadian Encylopedia. “I told them I wasn’t coming. But when you keep on saying no to those folks it means they must have you.”
In 1965, Dr. Hayden went to Washington for what he thought would be a four-month assignment, but he wound up staying for seven and a half years, serving as director of the Kennedy Foundation. His wife, Marion, who was also active in Special Olympics, moved to the U.S. capital with him and their four children.
Dr. Hayden and wife Marion Hayden during the Special Olympics Festival Gala at the Sheraton Centre Toronto in November, 2012.Della Rollins/The Globe and Mail
“I had the support of not just the foundation, but people like Eunice Kennedy Shriver, Ethel [Kennedy, wife of Robert Kennedy] and Teddy Kennedy [then in his early years as a U.S. senator] as well,” he told Mr. Freeborn. “Their involvement brought us a lot of attention and the movement grew.”
In 1968, Dr. Hayden co-ordinated the first Special Olympics Games, together with the Shrivers and Kennedys, at Soldier Field in Chicago. The event drew 900 athletes from 26 states and included the Beverley School floor hockey team, from Toronto.
Mr. Foster, who had a developmentally disabled brother and was leading the Special Olympics movement in Canada, attended the Chicago event and told Dr. Hayden that a similar one should be held in their homeland.
“I didn’t say, ‘Red, I have been trying for two and a half years,’” Dr. Hayden recalled in the Canadian Encylopedia interview. “I said, ‘Red, I think you’re right.’”
With political will having changed and financial coffers opened, Canada’s inaugural National Special Olympics Games were held a year later in Toronto. Dr. Hayden continued to advise Mr. Foster and told him that a national organization, not just an event, was needed to further the Canadian Special Olympics cause. Although Mr. Foster resisted the idea, pressure for a national body grew from the Western provinces, leading to the creation of Special Olympics Canada.
Dr. Hayden acknowledged his need for high-profile supporters to help him develop a Special Olympics structure through a top-down approach. But ultimately, he believed in growing the organization from the bottom up.
“The most important thing to remember is that the most important level of Special Olympics is at the community level, not the World Games,” Dr. Hayden told Mr. Freeborn.
Between 1988 and 1992, he launched and grew Special Olympics in other countries. At the time he was on sabbatical from his post as director of the School of Physical Education and Athletics at McMaster University, a job he began in 1975.
“I established an office in Washington for Special Olympics International and travelled the world as the Billy Graham of the Special Olympics,” said Dr. Hayden, who considered himself an evangelist for his cause.
Dr. Hayden retired from McMaster in 1988 and remained heavily involved with Special Olympics globally for decades afterward, continuing to attend events and guide training sessions with one or two of his children in tow.
His daughter Murn Meyrick travelled with him to Whitehorse as well as to the Bahamas, Morocco, Greece, Italy and South America, among other destinations.
At home, Dr. Hayden inspired a love of sport and competition in his offspring. Ms. Meyrick credits him with enabling her to excel in gymnastics while growing up and, later, marathons, triathlons, Ironman events and golf, as well as public speaking. She cherishes his advice on her career and life challenges.
“He was somebody who, if I was having a difficult day at work as a lawyer, I could call him up and talk about my issues or my problems, and he would help me solve [them],” she said in an interview.”
Dr. Hayden finally ceased his Special Olympics travels around the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, due to health factors.
Suffering from dementia and other health issues, he moved into a long-term care home in Oakville, Ont., where he died. Marion, his wife of 67 years and highly valued debating foil, especially on Special Olympics-related topics, predeceased him in 2024.
He leaves his children, Jamie, Laura, Murn and Sean, seven grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.
In an interview with the Canadian Press following Dr. Hayden’s death, Amy Van Impe, a 44-year-old Special Olympics athlete from Burlington, Ont., called him a “superhero.”
“I got to tell him how important he was,” Ms. Van Impe said.
“I have an intellectual disability, and I’m on the autism spectrum. … He gave me the confidence to help other people and understand everybody’s different.”
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