CHRISTINE'S BIG MOVE / She was born with the extra chromosome of Down'S syndrome - and graced with the determination to live life to its fullest ALL EDITIONS

• Published in: Newsday
• Main Author: By Laura Muha. Laura Muha is a free-lance writer
• Format: Newspaper Article
• Language: English
• Published: Long Island, N.Y Newsday LLC 03.01.1996
• Edition: Combined editions

JOSEPH and Theresa Vittorio stand in the doorway, watching their daughter Christine pack her bags. Looking back, Theresa and Joe can see just how true those words are. Letting their daughter go, letting her move out of the protective embrace of her family and into a group home in Seaford is really just another step in an ongoing process - a process that began on April 4, 1969. The obstetrician who had delivered Christine telephoned the fathers' waiting room at Mid-Island Hospital in Bethpage with news he couldn't bring himself to tell Joe in person. It was the first time they'd had to release her, but over the years many more such occasions would follow: The first time they gave her permission to go on an overnight field trip, Christine had waved happily from the bus window and Theresa and Joe clutched each other in the parking lot. The first time they let her go away to summer camp, she couldn't wait to leave and they couldn't wait for her to come home. The first time they left her alone for a halfhour while they ran to the store, she happily listened to music while they rushed through their errands to get home. (Any doubts they had about her ability to handle herself vanished during a subsequent trip, however, when they arrived home earlier than expected and found her behind the door brandishing a book. "I thought it was a burglar!" explains Christine.)