Gans stars at Claire concert

Friday, April 27, 2001 | 9:15 a.m.

Danny Gans will lead a star-studded fund-raising event Saturday at the Mirage to benefit the Lili Claire Foundation, a nonprofit organization for people born with Williams syndrome and other birth defects, such as Down syndrome and autism.

The foundation was established in 1998 to honor the memory of Lili Claire Resnick, who died at the age of five months while undergoing surgery at a Los Angeles hospital to correct a severe heart condition that is common to Williams syndrome victims.

Scheduled for guest appearances in "An Evening with Danny Gans and Friends" are actors Matt LeBlanc ("Friends"), Jane Kaczmarek ("Malcolm in the Middle"), Bradley Whitford ("The West Wing"), Marge Helgenberger ("C.S.I."), Holly Robinson Peete ("For Your Love") and Kevin Sorbo ("Andromeda").

The event will begin with a cocktail reception and a silent, live auction hosted by Jeff Probst ("Survivor"), followed by a performance by Gans. The evening will end with an after party, hosted by Kathy Griffin ("Suddenly Susan") and featuring musical acts Coolio, Big Bad Voodoo Daddy and the Young Dubliners.

Proceeds from the show will be used to help build the Lili Claire Life Skills Center, scheduled to open on East Twain Avenue east of Paradise Road after the first of next year.

Soon after Lili Claire died, her parents, Keith Resnick and Leslie Litt-Resnick, made a commitment to help others who suffer from their daughter's ailment and similar conditions. The foundation they formed has created a resource center and worldwide outreach program at UCLA, and it is developing a special education school in Santa Monica, Calif.

The Lili Claire center in Las Vegas will include a program to teach vocational skills to those who have Williams syndrome -- a neurogenetic birth defect that results in a variety of physical problems, as well as mild-to-severe mental retardation.

In addition to preparing clients for jobs, the center will teach them basic living skills, provide counseling for their families and diagnose whether a person has the ailment.

Long-range thinking

Keith Resnick, the foundation's executive director, said long-range plans include building a television studio in Las Vegas, where shows for national and cable television networks may be produced and distributed. The studio would provide jobs for some of the skill center's clients.

"One hundred percent of the profits from the studio will go to the Lili Claire Foundation."

Resnick had a long career in television, including executive positions with Golden West Television Productions, InterStar Releasing and Arlington Television Group. Leslie Resnick is casting director for Warner Bros. Television and the NBC comedy "Friends."

He downplayed the television studio, but he noted it will be "state of the art -- a full production studio capable of everything from distribution to programming.

"That is our second phase," Resnick said. "The focus right now is on building the life skills center."

He said about $250,000 is needed for the renovation project.

William Healey, a professor in the UNLV Department of Special Education, has played a key role in the foundation's presence in Las Vegas.

"The way I got involved is, I had helped the Williams Syndrome Foundation put on a national conference on the UNLV campus five years ago," Healey said.

Even before that, Healey had spearheaded a project that involved finding unusual jobs that could be performed by people with disabilities. One of the jobs involved doing certain routine tasks for archaeologists, which freed the archaeologists to apply their skills elsewhere.

"We found we could train people with special needs to do a number of fairly complex jobs," Healey said.

He said he came up with the idea to train people with special needs for jobs in television and theater, such as setting up props, pulling cables, video duplications, ushering and taking tickets.

"Since the Lili Claire Foundation is involved with a lot of people who are successful in movies, television and theater," Healey said, "we suggested that if the foundation would build a production center here ... we could prepare people with Williams syndrome to take jobs there."

TV studio, theater

He said the long-range plan is to have a television studio and legitimate theater facility.

"We're referring to it as a production center," Healey said. "We're doing it in cooperation with the UNLV theater department as well as the College of Fine Arts and a number of properties in the hotel industry."

He said the goal of the skills center will be to "provide guidance and training for employment and living."

It also will be a place where people may go for testing to determine if they have Williams syndrome.

"Any services (the clients) need will be identified," Healey said.

Healey said one of the reasons the foundation is putting down roots in Las Vegas is that Dr. Colleen Morris, who developed a test to identify Williams syndrome, is with the University of Nevada Medical School in Las Vegas.

"They wanted to take advantage of her expertise," Healey said.

According to information provided by the foundation, the syndrome is a rare congenital disorder caused by the deletion of elastin and approximately 20 additional genes on chromosome No. 7, and is characterized by a mix of physical and developmental characteristics.

It affects males, females and all ethnic groups. There is no known cure, or standard course of treatment. While the severity of symptoms varies among patients, common physical characteristics of Williams syndrome include an excessively impulsive and outgoing personality, intellectual developmental delay and learning disabilities, mental retardation or attention deficit disorder.

People with Williams syndrome display some highly developed intellectual areas such as verbal acuity, which often make them wonderful storytellers. They often have a striking musical ability, relatively good reading and phonics skills and extremely strong social skills.

Because of their high verbal and social abilities, educators are often misled into thinking that the children have better reasoning skills than they actually possess.

Healey said one of every 20,000 people in this country are born with Williams syndrome.

"They all could profit from the counseling center and the early special education services," Healey said.

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