Barbara Bromley spins her son, Shawn, who has cerebral palsy, in his wheelchair on the dance floor during a summer concert in Tustin’s Peppertree Park on Wednesday, August 3, 2017. Photo By Jeff Antenore, Contributing Photographer

Barbara Bromley takes her son, Shawn’s, hands while dancing with him during a summer concert featuring 1980’s covers by the band Past Action Heroes in Peppertree Park in Tustin on Wednesday, August 3, 2017. Photo By Jeff Antenore, Contributing Photographer

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Barbara Bromley spins her son, Shawn, who has cerebral palsy, in his wheelchair on the dance floor during a summer concert in Tustin’s Peppertree Park on Wednesday, August 3, 2017. Photo By Jeff Antenore, Contributing Photographer

Barbara Bromley pats her son, Shawn, on the head while dancing with him during a summer concert featuring 1980’s covers by the band Past Action Heroes in Peppertree Park in Tustin on Wednesday, August 3, 2017. Photo By Jeff Antenore, Contributing Photographer

Barbara Bromley spins her son, Shawn, who has cerebral palsy, in his wheelchair on the dance floor during a summer concert in Tustin’s Peppertree Park on Wednesday, August 3, 2017. Photo By Jeff Antenore, Contributing Photographer



Barbara Bromley spins her son, Shawn, who has cerebral palsy, in his wheelchair on the dance floor during a summer concert in Tustin’s Peppertree Park on Wednesday, August 3, 2017. Photo By Jeff Antenore, Contributing Photographer

Barbara Bromley spins her son, Shawn, who has cerebral palsy, in his wheelchair on the dance floor during a summer concert in Tustin’s Peppertree Park on Wednesday, August 3, 2017. Photo By Jeff Antenore, Contributing Photographer

Barbara Bromley takes her son, Shawn’s, hands while dancing with him during a summer concert featuring 1980’s covers by the band Past Action Heroes in Peppertree Park in Tustin on Wednesday, August 3, 2017. Photo By Jeff Antenore, Contributing Photographer

No one will miss the annual concerts in Peppertree Park more than Shawn.

The Tustin resident loves nothing more than dancing to rock ‘n’ roll. He does the rocking and his mom does the rolling.

At every concert this summer, Barbara Bromley has pushed her 46-year-old son onto the stage in his wheelchair and spun him around from beginning to end. They barely take a break.

Shawn is severely disabled due to cerebral palsy and seizure disorder. Unable to speak, he can answer yes and no questions with hand gestures.

He also can demonstrate his passion for music and movement — beaming with ecstatic grins.

“Music is truly the universal language,” Bromley, 63, said.

Bromley became Shawn’s legal guardian when he was 18. (She requested that his last name not be published.) But she considered him hers eight years before that.

“This is my only child — my baby boy,” said the single mom.

Bromley met Shawn when he was 10 and living in the state-run institution where she worked as a special education teacher.

“He wriggled his way into my heart,” she said, tearing up. “Cognitively, he’s all there. He taught me to have high expectations. Just because someone looks disabled, it doesn’t mean his brain isn’t working.”

Shawn had lived at the developmental center since the age of four months.

“In the early ’70s, it was not unusual for parents to institutionalize disabled children — they were practically encouraged to do so,” she said. “Things have changed since then.”

After an 11-year court battle, Bromley won her mission to move Shawn to a small group home with 24-hour nursing care in Tustin.

Now an education professor at Cal State Poly Pomona, Bromley pays visits during the week and brings Shawn to her Yorba Linda home every Saturday — when they often make trips to Disneyland.

Music is in his DNA, she said. At home, he constantly listens to KLOS and KRTH radio stations full-blast.

At Tustin’s penultimate concert of the year — on a particularly humid evening — Bromley boogied with Shawn to ’80s tunes until sweat dripped down her face.

“I enjoy it as much as he does,” she said.

She discovered his joyous reaction to the cover bands six years ago and has been bringing him ever since.

“Everyone is so friendly here,” Bromley said. “It is a diverse crowd. Others with disabilities are out there dancing, too.”

Bromley likes getting Shawn out not just for his amusement but also for public awareness.

“The more we include people with disabilities in our daily lives, the more ‘normal’ disabilities become,” she said.

Recently, she noticed a young boy staring at Shawn while they waited in a grocery checkout line. She asked if he had any questions.

“No, I’m just taking it all in,” the boy replied.

“I appreciated his honesty,” Bromley said. “It’s fine with me to take it all in.”

Children with disabilities come as a surprise to most parents, Bromley said. But she fully understood what lay before her.

“Shawn was my destiny, my kismet,” she said. “I was meant to be his mom.”