Ted Fox begins almost every day with a cup of hazelnut coffee from McDonalds.  It’s one of the many joys he finds in life, one that many of us take for granted. For Fox, it’s what he considers a ”hot date.”

To know Fox is to know the L’Arche Syracuse community.  He is one of the most tenured “core members” of the faith-based organization for adults with mental disabilities and disorders. Although Fox has cerebral palsy on his right side, he hasn’t let it be a burden to him, but a blessing to others around him.

“Ted is the guy who first welcomed me when I walked in the door,” Emily Cox said, the co-head of house at the L’Arche home on Galster Avenue in Syracuse. “As soon as Ted gets to know you, he wants [your] attention and he wants [the person] to know all about him. It’s a part of what makes him who he is.”

Fox is one of four core members that live in the L’Arche Syracuse Galster home. The home is one of four in the greater L’Arche community.  The community was established in 1974 to assist people who are disabled.  The community depends strongly on faith and personal relationships and provides a two-way communication between its core members and the assistants that live among them.

“I’m happy,” Fox says, when asked about how he feels to live in a home where he has support of friends around him. His laughter supports his response.

Although his speech is difficult to understand, Ted communicates well with the core members of his house and the assistants that live and share time with him during his day-to-day activities.

“It takes a while, but I love being able to translate Ted for people who don’t know him,” Cox said. “He has so much to say, it’s just that people don’t know it. Also, he’s really smart at giving you clues.”

Despite his physical disability, Fox lives a productive life with the help of L’Arche Syracuse. He participates in the nightly prayer sessions, attends several community activities during the week such as candle making and art class, and he works weekly for Nutritional Ecological Environmental Delivery System, or N.E.E.D.S. in Syracuse.

“Ted’s been working for just over 10 years,” Jeff Cosentino said, the operations manager at Needs. “He’s extremely personable, so I think he really loves coming in, even more than working,  and interacting with everyone here. I couldn’t be happier with what he does.”

And Fox truly enjoys earning his living and doing his part.

“He’s aware enough to understand work and he feels great getting his paycheck because he’s a numbers man,” Cox said. “I think it really gives him a sense of worth or his place not only in our community but in the greater Syracuse community.”

Fox has been in the L’Arche Syracuse community since 1978, when he was 18 years old. He had lived in an institution prior to then, but assistants who have been around since then have said that he has changed a lot since then and has grown more independent.

Fox’s dialect becomes more understandable the longer you speak with him. He says the reason he moved to L’Arche is because he didn’t know his mother. He does enjoy the family he has grown to know in the home. They go out for dinner, movies and coffee and it makes him feel good. Fox also likes to joke around with Harold, one of the other core members of the house.

Fox is a true testament of what L’Arche lives by as laid out by its community objectives: to provide homes where those who need care and those who give it live and work together in a shared life; to assist persons with developmental disabilities who need assistance in daily living and integration into society; and to provide direction, assistance and advocacy in the development of personal skills for trades and occupations.

“What we do is not solely a job, it’s a way of life,” Cox said.