08/27/2026
Still celebrating 30 years of service with the following article appearing in The Leader-Union.
"Seeing a Need... Serving the Community
FAYCO Enterprises celebrates 30 years of growth in serving disabled area residents
Wednesday will mark 30 years since Nyla Graham satin an empty FAYCO Enterprises building and read a book.
It was the first day the new workshop opened its doors, and nobody was quite sure what to do. The director at the time, Don Wright, was spending the day visiting a similiar facility in Centralia, gaining ideas for FAYCO.
So, Nyla Graham, his administrative assistant, was left to hold down the fort. However, the building on Ill. Route 185 that used to house a county nursing home held only a table, couch and chair. There was no phone or proper desk, and nobody to keep her company.
"I sat out at that old building by myelf," Graham said. "It was so spooky."
She marveled at how far the operation, where she still works as the administrative assistant to the director, has come in the past 30 years.
FAYCO serves the community as a workshop and rehabilitation center for physically and mentally disabled adults.
It places some clients in jobs throughout the community, and those who need a more sheltered place to work can receive a paycheck from FAYCO's workshop.
Its transportation program buses clients to and from work.
FAYCO has also added a residential program, offering five assisted living facilites (two in Vandalia, two in Greenville, and one in Hillsboro) and apartments for those who only need intermittent services.
The business offers day programs, ranging from vocational training to a senior room, where severely disabled sentior citizens can gather to do activites.
Adjoining the senior room is a Snoezelen therapy room. Snoezelen, a Dutch word that has become a trademark for this type of equipment, is meant to either stimulate or relax clients, depending on their needs.
The therapy room, open to all clients, houses a water wall, bubble tubes, a swing, water beds, recliners and a light panel that flashes when sound is made (to help teach cause and effect).
The prevocational room is for clients with more severe disabilities who may be able to work for an hour or two per day.
In the workshop, clients do various manufacturing jobs for which FAYCO has contracted with industries such as Graham Packaging of Vandalia and Cooper B-Line of Highland, as well as the state of Illinois.
The contracts come and go, said current director Bob Lindberg. "We have a lot of different industry," he said.
In fact, one current workshop project is for a man in Connecticut who purchases electric blankets that have been returned to stores. FAYCO clients cut off one end of the blanket, remove the cords and wires, and sew the end back together. They send them back to Connecticut to be sold at truck stops.
This entire operation, which now serves 260 clients per year in all of its programs, blossomed out of an idea that came up in a mid-1970's special education class in the Vandalia School District.
It became clear to the teachers and a group of parents that after these special education students graduated from high school, there was nothing for them to do.
Many simply sat at home all day and watched television, said Katie Schukar, whose son, Randy, was in the class.
Wilbert Dothager, who also had a son named Randy in special education, agreed that FAYCO "really benefits the handicapped people in this areas tremendously. They wouldn't have any place to go but home, or a nursing home."
Dothager was the first president of FAYCO's Board of Directors. Besides Schukar and Dothager, parents involved from the beginning were the late Bill Feezel and the late Adele Stewart.
Quite a bit went into the effort to open FAYCO before Graham sat and read her book in 1976.
The group, which grew as the word spread, built the operation from the group up, starting only with an idea.
Schukar said it took two or three years of raising money and laying the groundwork before they could hire a staff for FAYCO.
First, the steering committtee had to conduct a survey of the county, which proved that the area had enough disabled people to warrant opening a workshop.
"They found that we had so many who people didn't know," Schukar siad.
Then, the group broke into two boards - the governing board and the advocates, who took on the task of raising a great deal of money.
Dothager said they received a grant from the Illinois Mental Health Department, but Schukar pointed out that in the beginning, they had to match any grant money that came in.
Therefore, the advocates held three fundraisers per year - a turkey dinner, for which they cooked 20 turkeys; an ice cream social, which grew out of Marilyn Calvert's basement after one year and ended with 60-80 gallons of ice cream being made in Schukar's basement; and a country music show that brought in entertainers from Branson, Mo.
They held those fundraisers for several years, even after the workshop opened, until FAYCO began to retrieve sufficient money from the state.
The board obtained a charter, drawn up by local attorney and taken to Springfield by Don Brummet, Vandalia's state representative at the time.
They visited other workshops, such as those in Effingham and Centralia, and they contacted agencies and experts in this field.
They also found a home for the workshop - in a building on Ill. Route 185, formerly used for a county nursing home, which they leased from the county for $1 per year.
Iris Rademacher, who got involved as a substitute teacher in the special education class, said she remembers scrubbing the building, trying to make it a nice home for the new operation.
Finally, the board was ready to hire staff members, starting with Wright and Graham.
Wright served as the director of nine years, and he was followed by Gary Cecil, who served for two years. Lindberg started his tenure in 1987, having worked at similiar facilities in Joliet and New York state.
FAYCO opened when the disabled workshop field was relatively young in Illinois. Facilities were being developed throughout the state, Lindberg said, including the one he helped develope in Joliet.
When he moved to the Fayette County facility, Lindberg said, he saw it as a challenge, wondering whether a quality program could be operated in a rural area.
"I think we've demonstrated that it can," he said. "It's kind of, for me, an amazing process."
In fact, the program has grown so much taht it is currently in its third location.
After about 11 years, FAYCO bought the old Brenco Building on Veterans Avenue, and used bothe locations for awhile.
The first building has since been demolished, however, and most of FAYCO's operations are in a building on Sunset Avenue, which was purchased and renovated in 1998.
FAYCO uses the building on Veterans Avenue mainly for its transporation program, as well as a couple of offices and overflow space for the workshop.
Marilyn Calvert, who served as the board's treasurerfor about five years in the early stages of FAYCO, said it was difficult to realize at the time "how far it might go, and the people it might serve."
She said that even though she did not previously work with disabled people, she could see "a need for those people who were capable of something, but who (couldn't go) out into the work force with the training they were getting in school."
Calvert said, "It brought some paychecks to these individuals who were not able to function with less supervision in a regular workplace. Some got the first paychecks they'd ever had."
Rademacher called FAYCO a "special spot" for its clients. "They became part of the community, more accepted," she said.
Both Schukar and Dothager admitted that building the FAYCO operation was a lot of work.
"But it has been rewarding so that it's worth it all," Schukar said.
Graham, who has stayed for 30 year simply because she enjoys her job, said the past three decades have been very rewarding.
"I haven't worked with clients hardly ever, but I've enjoyed being around them and seeing how much they can grow and learn," Graham said.
Lindberg sees the benefits of FAYCO reach its clients far and beyond.
The operation adds about $25 million to the area's economy each year, he said, due to the people it employs and the jobs they complete.
Plus, "it helps families to be able to live their lives without disruption," Lindberg said.
"If you help a family, you reap the benefits," Lindberg said, "and if you don't help a family, you suffer the consequences."
