I grew up in a neighborhood much like Bressi Ranch. It was an upper middle-class planned subdivision in suburban Ohio. Our neighbors were doctors and dentists and engineers. The lawns were neat, the gardens tidy, the sidewalks kept clean. We knew every family within a five-block radius, and my mom still keeps in touch with most of our closest neighbors.

And while we didn't have any group homes for the mentally disabled, we did have -- were lucky to have -- Jimmy and Georgina.

Jimmy and Georgina were in their 20s, but both had Down Syndrome. And so they played with us younger kids, those of us in the 8-12 range.

They were an integral part of the gang of kids in our neighborhood. If you were trying to round up enough kids to get a game going, Jimmy and Georgina were on the list, every bit as much as anyone else. While I remember referring to them as the retarded kids, it was only in that way of stark honesty children have -- the way you might have referred to me as the kid with the thick glasses.

As our group grew older and moved out of that time of life devoted to games of make-believe and imagination, we left Jimmy and Georgina behind -- but our younger siblings picked up the slack.

In later years, I wondered what happened to Jimmy and Georgina. Like most kids with Down Syndrome, they were born to older parents. Where would they go when their folks died?

All of this comes to mind in reading about the organized opposition to a group home for autistic young men in Carlsbad's Bressi Ranch neighborhood.

And all I can ascribe such fearful hostility to is a lack of familiarity with the mentally disabled.

Surely the Bressi Ranch residents don't truly mean to suggest that we should just take the mentally disabled and lock them up in Dickensian warehouses. Where do the opponents suggest these young men live? Why is their upscale subdivision too good for the autistic?

As Times reporter Barbara Henry so ably reported in last Sunday's edition, the young men who live in nine other group homes operated throughout North County by the nonprofit group TERI are the sons of our friends, neighbors and extended family. They are well-behaved, with their neighbors reporting these existing group homes as being a positive influence on the neighborhoods.

As the father of one of TERI's clients told the Times, parents with disabled adult children worry about what will happen to their children when they, the parents, eventually die. Having his 19-year-old son be able to live in a semi-autonomous environment, to have his own friends and interests apart from his family, has been an unimaginable relief for this father -- and one suspects, for all the parents of all these young adults in the TERI program.

That an organization such as TERI exists, and that there are people with the inclination to work as supervisors at these group homes is a blessing for which we should all feel grateful.

I hope Jimmy and Georgina found such a home.

Contact staff writer Jim Trageser at jtrageser@nctimes.com or (760) 740-5408.