For Parish

• By ELLYN COUVILLION
• Advocate staff writer
• Published: Sep 24, 2009 - Page: 1D

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Parish Webber, a local 14-month-old, will have his picture up in lights on Broadway this month.

A video production, featuring the photos of Parish and others,  will be shown Saturday on the huge MTV plasma screen in New York’s Times Square to kick off National Down Syndrome Awareness Month in October.

The video will feature photos of such adults, teens and children, as Parish, who have Down syndrome, “working, playing and learning with friends and family,” according to the National Down Syndrome Society, which coordinated the video.

The “Times Square Video” will precede a 1-mile Buddy Walk in Central Park, the “premier advocacy event for Down syndrome,” according to the society.  

“We were ecstatic” when Parish’s photo was selected, said his dad, Brook Webber, who named his landscaping business, Parish Lawn and Landscape Solutions, after his son.

Take one look at the picture of the grinning Parish, holding onto his squeaky clean toes in the tub, and it’s not hard to see why it was one of some 220 pictures selected out of 2,500 submitted from around the world. 

Parish will no doubt soon have fans worldwide, but he already has a grassroots fan club — an LSU student group called the LSU Ambassadors.

As the assistant director of the office of orientation at LSU, Parish’s mom, Kelli Webber, also advises the LSU Ambassadors, who recruit, orient and advise incoming students.

Shortly after Parish was born, students of the LSU Ambassadors formed their own team and raised money in Parish’s name for the local 2008 Buddy Walk.

They’ll be participating again in the upcoming area event on Saturday, Oct. 17.

“Finding the Treasure in Each Parish” was last year’s motto for the team, which sought donations from friends and family throughout the state.

“…in one fell swoop, my LSU Ambassadors introduced us to an amazing community of support in our town,” Webber says in her story about the experience, which she wrote for the site of the National Down  Syndrome Society.

Down syndrome is a genetic condition that carries with it an increased risk of certain medical conditions such as respiratory and hearing problems, according to the society’s Web site, http://www.ndss.org.