Mark Alexander, Executive Director

How about a date?! A calendar date that is!! We all have numerous days and dates in our own life that have great meaning, and Bay Area Rehabilitation Center is no different. Let's just pick a few - 1948, 1966, 1979, 1992, 2007, and of course there's always Dec, 2000 (more on that later!). Each one of those dates has a special meaning here at Bay Area, and I'm going to take just a moment to tell you abut each one. 

1948:  The year of the genesis of what would become Bay Area Rehabilitation Center. A small group of concerned families banded together to provide better services for their children, most of whom had Cerebral Palsy. This initail volunteer group formed the Baytown Spastic Society, which later became the Baytown Society for Crippled Children, and later on after they had begun to expand the program and were in need of additional organizational structure...

1966:  Formed the formal non-profit corporation that is now Bay Area Rehabilitation Center. This new structure allowed the organization to better function and more efficently provide therapy services to the growing population of children who were using these services.

1979:  The name of the corporation was changed to Bay Area Rehabilitation Center.

1992:  After years of continual growth and dependence on temporary facilities, the new (and current) building at 5315 Decker Drive was complete and occupied. The move into this building was critical to the ongoing growth of Bay Area Rehabilitation Center. Not only did the new facility have a large and open environment in which to see and treat children, it also included a massive heated therapy pool where clients of all ages could now receive aquatic based therapy year-round, and that therapy continues today!

2007:  One of the most important dates in recent Center history, in May of this year the former Baytown Opportunity Center was merged into current operations, bringing with it staff, clients, and a couple of new board members! Despite some of the well thought concerns, since the merger, operations in the Opportunity Center program have nearly tripled in terms of total revenues, and the number of clients seen has increased by a factor of 6! In any assessment, the addition of the Opportunity Center program has been of great benefit not only to Bay Area Rehabilitation Cneter, but also those clients who receive services there and the community in general.

These are just a few of the important dates over the past 64 years of the Cneter's history. But even with the importance of each of those dates, none are any more important than the dates a new client begins services and ultimately completes his or her therapy and moves back to a previous level of ability! That is really what Bay Area Rehabilitation Cneter is all about, and we want to continue to celebrate those dates every day!

Oh, and that December, 2000 date, well, that's really just important to me - that's when my life got just a little better by starting my career at Bay Area Rehabilitation Center!

Mark A. Alexander, Executive Director