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Who We Are, Where Were Goin'

Priority 4 Families, Formerly the Wolf-Hirschhorn Syndrome (4p-) Support Group and Newsletter, is an organization dedicated to educating parents, foster parents, caregivers and professional with Chromosome 4 Abnormalities, along with networking parents to parents.

In 1990, Brenda Grimmett founded & started the support group "Wolf-Hirschhorn (4p-) Support Group & Newsletter" the newsletter was called "Dancin' with Wolf's". After the diagnosis of A.J. in 1987, doctors gave little information and hope for AJ. After searching for other families with WHS, Brenda found a parent (Becky Richardson) that had organized a parent-to-parent support group with biographies on other WHS children. The bio's helped but Bob & Brenda felt that there needed to be more to offer families, that sparked the idea of starting the first U.S. support group for Wolf-Hirschhorn (4P-) Syndrome. The group started out with only 43 families known at that time, ten years later there are 400 plus families worldwide.

With the advance techonolgy today more children and even adults are being diagnosed with All types of Chromosome 4 Abnormalities. For this reason "Priority 4 Families" was organized by Jay Robertson and Brenda Grimmett on March 1, 2001.

Jay married Nicole & Garett ('97) last year (2000), and quickly became educated on WHS on what little information is available, together they have a daughter Kierra (2/01). Nicole is a homemaker, mother and wife. He is active in the Texas Municipal Police Association. Founded four state non-profit groups and is currently President of his local Police Association, and began participating in Parliamentary Procedure in 1983.

Bob and Brenda have 2 boys, AJ (1987) and Zachary (1995) both have WHS. Bob is in Maintenance. Brenda is a Parent Coordinator for Early Intervention in Lorain County, Ohio. Brenda is on the Parent Advisory Committee for Bureau for Mentally Handicapped Children (BCMH) and Family Resources, Speaks before the House of Representives at the Statehouse (Ohio), and Teaches from a parents prespective for regular and special education teachers at Kent, Akron and Malone College/University.

Priority 4 Families will be hosting regional and national gathering in the near future. If you are interesting in attending, hosting, or speaking at our conferences please feel free to contact us. We are always looking for new ideas and are open to your opinions.