About Us

Our Story

Introduction:

At the beginning, our story was not added to the website because the founder did not want to make the organization and its story about himself and his family but rather about the bigger story that Rosary Makers of America stand for which is to give our  special needs young adult a special place and a center of excellence where they can come to be gainfully employed and engaged in the art of making beautiful rosaries and in so doing enjoy the pride, the joy and the dignity of honest human labor.

When I insisted and reassured him that the story behind the formation of our organization, Rosary Makers of America,  would not be a distraction, but an asset and that people truly wanted to know how Rosary Makers of America came to be, he penned down the story that would unfold hereunder which I have captioned “The Story behind Our Story”.

~Cynthia Okoro,  Administator.

The Story Behind Our Story

The Inspiration:

The birth of our most beloved son Ikenna Michael Ihenacho was our inspiration for the founding of Rosary Makers of America. It was 1996 and I was a pursuing my subspecialty training in nephrology (the study and treatment of kidney diseases) in the beautiful and picturesque town of Albuquerque New Mexico and my wife was working as a staff pharmacist in a local mail order pharmacy when our fifth child, Ikenna was conceived. It was our fourth and last pregnancy. At the third, we were blessed with a pair of twins. His four siblings were healthy and their pregnancies were uneventful and routine.

A Routine Prenatal Visit and An Unexpected Intrauterine Diagnosis:

My wife had gone for one of her routine prenatal visits with her obstetrician and I had gone off to my job as a subspecialist doctor in training. On this visit she was to undergo a rather routine test, called amniocentesis (taking a sample of the baby fluid or amniotic fluid) to check in the laboratory on the health of the baby in the womb. Having had three previous pregnancies with four to kids to show for them, we were not in any way concerned about the test or its outcome until the obstetrician came back to pronounce or announce the result of the test. “Ma’am”, he began rather tentatively, “this looks like trisomy 23 (a medical jargon for Down’s syndrome) but just to be 100% certain, we would send it out for a confirmatory test. Should the confirmatory test result come back positive, would you want to terminate the pregnancy”? He inquired.  To this question my wife calmly and definitively told him, No.  She further clarified to her obstetrician that pregnancy termination was simply not an option.

Our after-dinner conversations that night was very somber and sobering, as my wife recounted to me how her day had gone and all that transpired at the obstetrician’s office. I commended her for her response and told her that I loved more than ever and that her response, that pregnancy termination was out of the question, was my response too. So, we waited for the confirmatory test report and we prayed and prayed but the confirmatory test report came back confirming the preliminary report as positive. For the remaining period of the pregnancy we continued to pray for an intrauterine healing or miracle for our son.

A Valentine Baby, February 12, 1997:

On February 12, 1997, our beautiful son Ikenna Micheal Ihenacho was born and I shade tears of joy when I heard his loud cry and held him close to my heart in the delivery room. My wife and I were full of joy and gratitude to God for his precious life and we wondered how his life would evolve. Trusting in our most holy, all loving, all knowing and all-powerful Father in Heaven, we return to life as usual and back to the “playground”, if you will, like little kids, handing over to the Father all that troubled us.

The brave infant:

When our son Ikenna was barely one year old he underwent and open-heart surgery to correct some heart condition that was common in children with Down’s syndrome. The surgery went very well. The whole family, siblings, parents and grandparents had accompanied him to this surgery. I still remember this trip to the tertiary hospital where the surgery was performed as if it was yesterday. Following the surgery, he had remained in very good health and his life along with his older siblings had settled into the daily routines of school, church, music lessons, sports and other extracurricular events and activities.

What would the child do when he grows up?

Like all parents we wondered what Ikenna would do when he grows up. It was about his ten birthday that we began to ponder what he would do when he grows up. We were active in our Corpus Christi Catholic Church rosary apostolate, and we did meet to pray the rosary after the weekday Masses and before the 8 o’clock Sunday Masses. We published a leaflet to teach people how to pray the rosary and started a small group to learn the art of rosary making. This rosary making group met once a week and my wife and I went once a week with our son Ikenna to learn how to make rosary. Our rosary group did not last long as people moved on to other things and we took our newly acquired rosary making skills home with us and continued to make rosaries at home with Ikenna.

Making rosaries was great fun and we all enjoyed the art. Our son Ikenna would work patiently and diligently at stringing the rosary beads and would beam with great joy and pride each time he completes a new rosary. Thus, the Rosary Makers of America, Inc.  a center of rosary making excellence, was born to serve all special need young adults (ie young adults with developmental disability).