Stan Szymanski

http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/news/pittsburgh/s_612324.html

After his daughter got sick, Stan Szymanski found that caring for someone with a debilitating disease takes a toll on the soul.

He and his family wanted to turn to the congregation at their church, but couldn't find the support they needed.

"When someone has a heart attack, you find the entire church rallies around them," said Szymanski, 49, of Bell Acres. "But when it's a continuing sickness, the support just isn't there."

Six months after Hannah died at age 10, Szymanski is offering that safe haven to others. Encouraging Angels, a nonprofit he and his wife founded promoting disability awareness, last week kicked off "Alive After 5," a weekly praise service for people with disabilities and their caretakers.

The two-hour service features music, prayer and a guest speaker, and is designed to offer support to those dealing with long-term disabilities, following the call Jesus issued in the book of Luke.

"The call is out there," Szymanski said. "We're told to go out into the streets of the city and bring in the poor and crippled and blind and lame. But churches aren't doing it."

Alive After 5 fills a void in Christian churches in Southwestern Pennsylvania, said John Smith, guest speaker at the first session.

"We need to be made more aware of the need to be sensitive to these issues," said Smith, pastor at Grace United Methodist Church of Coal Center, just outside of California in Washington County. "The key for me is support. The caregiver is isolated, and they need the support of the church."

That is something Szymanski and his wife Cindy felt was missing before their daughter died in August.

Hannah was diagnosed with the genetic disorder Williams syndrome just before she turned 3. She stopped talking and walking and began having seizures. A year and a half later, she was diagnosed with Batten disease, an inherited disorder that affects nerve cells in the brain. Both conditions are rare, with Williams occurring in 1 in every 20,000 live births and the late infantile form of Batten disease in 1 of every 100,000.

"It was hard," Szymanski said. "You think you can turn to your church, but sometimes you can't."

Lisa Szuminsky of Bentleyville attended the first session of Alive After 5 because she wanted to find out how she could help others at her church, Grace United Methodist.

"I personally think every child is a child of God," Szuminsky said. "Children that are exceptional are no different."

The first session was sparsely attended, but Szymanski hopes Alive After 5 will grow and help others in the situation he and his wife were in just months ago.

"We've been there, and we know how hard it is," he said. - Pittsburgh Tribune-Review

http://www.pittmag.pitt.edu/summer2005/homecoming.html

Beautiful Battlefield
Stan Szymanski slips a gift into instructor Jeff Mangone’s mailbox in the Pitt Music Building at Fifth and Bellefield avenues.

The mailbox is in a hallway lined with bulletin boards that are cluttered with colorful flyers advertising upcoming concerts and musical instruments for sale. The scenery is much different from the sterile hallways of Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh, where Szymanski (CAS ’82) has spent many days with his 7-year-old daughter, Hannah.

The gift he slid into his former music teacher’s mailbox is a CD that Szymanski recorded. It’s called Beautiful Battlefield, a collection of Christian songs that he wrote for Hannah.

At 2 years old, the toddler stopped forming words. She began stumbling to the ground, unable to walk. Then, the seizures started. After several trips to specialists, Hannah was diagnosed with Williams syndrome and Batten disease, two rare neurological disorders. The prognosis wasn’t good.

Yet, Hannah’s condition is improving because of a special therapy that Szymanski developed through personal research and some help from doctors. He also attributes her progress to his family’s faith.

The songs echo how he and his family have sought life in the midst of illness, light in the darkest hours.

The sense of fighting an enemy, of doing battle, comes through in Szymanski’s CD, says Pitt’s Mangone, who is the principal bass player at the Benedum Center and a bass guitarist well known among Pittsburgh musicians. “Even when he was my student,” says Mangone, “music was incredibly important to him, and he was very serious about it.”

Szymanski created Beautiful Battlefield from two everlasting loves: music and Hannah, what he calls a beautiful bond. He performs the music and sells the CD to help pay for her therapies. - Pitt Magazine

(to listen to the interview) http://www.modavox.com/voiceamerica/vepisode.aspx?aid=15698

Encouraging Angels is a music ministry designed to raise awareness to the plight of disabled children and their families, and specifically to encourage the church to assimilate them into the local body of believers. Joining Joyce is Stan Szymanski, Christian Recording Artist and Chief Executive Officer of Encouraging Angels and dad of Hannah Rose Szymanski who is living with 2 rare diseases affecting only one in 2 billion children. It is out of his personal experience and need to reach out to others that Encouraging Angels was established with the mission of “Disability awareness through music and witness”. - Voice America