RIP: Anita Blair (1916-2010) and Betty G. Miller (1934-2012)

Two obituaries came to my attention this morning. Both women died more than a year ago, but I'm just seeing these now. If I write about them here, I won't forget to follow up with getting Wikipedia entries going about them, when the time allows.

I first mentioned Anita Lee Blair (pictured at left, a white woman dressed in a dark suit, in a portrait with her guide dog Fawn) at this blog a few years ago, when David Paterson had become Governor of New York, and the topic of blind elected officials was in the news.  Anita Blair was born in 1916, and became blind after head injuries sustained in a car accident, not long after graduating from high school (no seatbelts or safety glass in the 1930s).  She graduated from the Texas College of Mines and Metallurgy; later she earned a master's degree as well.  She was the first person in El Paso to receive a guide dog, a German shepherd named Fawn; she even made a short film about Fawn, to use on her lecture tour.  Fawn and Anita made headlines in 1946, when they escaped a deadly hotel fire in Chicago.  As far as anyone can tell, she was the first blind woman ever elected to any state legislature--she served one term in the Texas House of Representatives, 1953-55.  (Here's a Time Magazine article mentioning that she won the Democratic nomination for that race.)  She was also the only woman appointed to Harry Truman's Presidential Safety Committee, the first person to bring a service dog onto the floor of the US Senate, and later was a familiar presence in El Paso, vocal on talk radio and at city council meetings.  Anita Lee Blair died in 2010, just a couple weeks before her 94th birthday, survived by her slightly younger sister Jean.  Upon her passing, the Texas House of Representatives passed a resolution in tribute to their former member.  There's a video of Blair talking about her life on youtube (not captioned), and her El Paso Times obituary included a photo gallery from news files.

Betty G. Miller's obituary turned up in this month's Penn State alumni magazine.  (Miller is pictured at right, a white woman wearing a hat and glasses, with a big smile.) She was a deaf child of deaf parents, and learned ASL as a child at home, but was sent to oral education programs also, an experience that became a theme in her works.  Betty Miller was an artist, an art educator (she had an EdD from Penn State, and taught at Gallaudet), an author, and by her own account the first deaf person to receive certification as an addiction counselor.  In 1972 she had her first one-woman show, "The Silent World," at Gallaudet.  Further shows followed over the next several decades, and a large-scale neon installation by Miller is in the lobby of the Student Activities Center at the Eastern North Carolina School for the Deaf.  She was survived by her partner, artist Nancy Creighton.  Some of Miller's works can be seen in this Wordgathering article by Creighton and at this Pinterest board.

Apparently, this is post #1000 at DSTU, according to Blogger (I suspect that count includes some drafts that didn't ever get posted, for various reasons).  Happy 1000 to our readers, then!

RIP: Reynolds Price (1933-2011)

North Carolina writer Reynolds Price died today, from a heart attack, just before his 77th birthday, according to a Duke University press release and the Charlotte Observer. Here's the birthday post we had for Price at DS,TU in 2007.

RIP: Laura Hershey (1962-2010)

Another sad, sudden loss: disability rights activist and poet Laura Hershey has died after a very brief illness. The Denver Post obituary has such a lovely photograph of her, and summarizes the facts of her life and work. Laura's facebook page has become (as they do, in such times) a place for posting condolences to the family and memories and tributes. Many other blogs have been posting the news and links to some of Laura Hershey's best-known works, including FWD ("You Get Proud by Practicing"), Media dis&dat, and Victor Pineda. Visit cripcommentary.com for links to many other materials written by or about Laura Hershey. She will be terribly missed.

RIP: Howard Leland Rice (1932-2010)

[visual description: Howard L. Rice in a wheelchair, holding a microphone; he's an older white man wearing glasses and a grey suit]

It's been a rough month for disability obituaries. We lost historian Paul Longmore (1946-2010), of course, and activist Barbara Knowlen (1941-2010), and I've recently learned of another: Rev. Howard L. Rice (1932-2010), former chaplain and Professor of Ministry at the San Francisco Theological Seminary, and once the moderator of the Presbyterian Church USA (the annually elected head for the whole denomination). Rice died August 8.

Rice (pictured at left) was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis as a young man, and used a wheelchair or crutches much of his adult life. (Later in life, the MS diagnosis was changed to spinal cord damage.) As a minister, he experienced first-hand the barriers that church buildings and their congregations present to disabled people, especially to disabled worship leaders. I heard him speak at a conference once, about deciding that he wasn't going to accept speaking invitations at inaccessible churches anymore--it wasn't practical ("If we can't go, we can't come," he noted, on the problem of accessible restrooms), and it wasn't tolerable on any other grounds either. When he did speak from an accessible pulpit once, he declared, "I don’t believe you have to preach from a pulpit. But it’s nice to have the choice."

RIP: Paul Longmore (1946-2010)

"The truth is that the major obstacles we must overcome are pervasive social prejudice, systematic segregation, and institutionalized discrimination."

--Paul Longmore, "Why I Burned my Book"

Sad news today. Paul Longmore, professor of history and director of the Institute on Disability at San Francisco State University, has died suddenly. There will surely be many, many remembrances and obituaries; Stephen Drake's was the first I saw, at the Not Dead Yet blog. And Wesley J. Smith has something up (mostly the press release from Californians Against Assisted Suicide) at Secondhand Smoke.

Paul's facebook page is becoming an impromptu wall of condolences and memories. Here's what scattered items I'll add.

*When historians of disability submitted an amicus brief to the Supreme Court in the Garrett case in 2000, Paul was the one who invited the signatures of over 100 scholars, because he knew exactly who to tap.

*I've been co-editing H-Disability since it launched in March 2001. But I had nothing to do with its founding--that's credited to Paul Longmore and the summer institute where the idea was hatched, long before my involvement.

*I'm president of the Disability History Association right now--but in many ways, the organization exists and thrives because Paul Longmore was very, very persistent when he saw an opportunity to support scholarship on disability.

*And when Paul organized a conference for disability historians in summer 2008, you know it was seriously accessible, not only to the participants but to our families.

Paul Longmore was a historian, with a PhD in history from Claremont Graduate School. It was important to him to know what your degree was in, and he worried about non-historians doing disability history without proper training or rigor. Now, none of my degrees are in history, even if I do historical projects. So it was a real and happy surprise to get a brief email from Paul, one day in 2004, just saying "I just wanted to let you know how much I enjoyed your essay in the volume edited by Noll and Trent. It's really good history. Thank you." I kept that email window open for a very long time on my desktop. Thank you, Paul.

RIP Judi Chamberlin (1944-2010)

[visual description: photograph of Judi Chamberlin, holding a book titled "From Privileges to Rights: People Labeled with Psychiatric Disabilities Speak for Themselves" from the National Council on Disability.]

"Lots of times you read an article about disabilities and have someone with cerebral palsy speaking about cerebral palsy or somebody blind talking about being blind, and then you have a family member talking about what it's like to be mentally ill and the interviewer seem to think that's the same thing, but it's not."

Psychiatric survivor activist Judi Chamberlin has died, according to a note posted on her blog, which documented her months with hospice care.

RIP Ruth Shelton (d. 2010)

Thanks to Marty Omoto's CDCAN Report for sharing the text of Ruth Shelton's testimony at a 2002 State Assembly hearing in Sacramento. Shelton, an active member of Capitol People First Sacramento, died Friday morning, at home. I won't try to tell her story, because she told her own story:

CLOSE THE DOORS
Testimony given April 30, 2002 to the Assembly Human Services Committee informational hearing on Olmstead Decision Compliance, State Capitol in Room 4202

I have come a long way.
When I was ten years old my parents put me in Sonoma State Hospital.
They had four little kids and another on the way.
This was during the depression.
I lived at Sonoma Developmental Center for over 45 years.
I was asked to live with a foster family in San Francisco.
The Foster Mom died of a drug overdose.
I moved into a Skilled Nursing Facility in Sacramento
because there was no other place to go.
I lived there for 5 years.
It was certainly not much of a life.
I had no choices about anything.
I was told when to eat. What to eat.
Where to go and when to go there.
They did not know I was an artist.
They did not know that I could sing.
They did not know that I had the right to vote.
But I showed them.

I think people should have respect for one another.
Just because we look different or talk different
doesn't mean we don't understand what is going on.
We are of worth.
We have good minds and good ideas.
Let us have a voice in the decisions which effect us.
I now live with my best friend Laura Lee.
We live and work together as a team.
I use In Home Support Services.
Alta Regional Center pays for my transportation.
And they pay for me to attend the Short Center North
where I am an artist, performer, and teacher.
As a member of Capitol People 1st,
I know a lot of people who need services to live in the community.
We need homes we can afford.
We need Supported Living services & choices in providers.
Each person's support needs are different.
Today there are a lot more choices than when I was a child.
But even with all of the choices that we have now.
Why do we still need institutions?
Why do we still have state hospitals
when they deny people their freedom?
I have a voice!
I have a mind!.
I have a choice!
I am of worth!
I am important!.
I am a child of God!
Close the State Hospital!
And open the doors to community living.
Thank you.

Virginia McKinney (1924-2009)

Obituary in the Los Angeles Times today for Virginia McKinney, who founded and ran the Center for Communicative Development in Koreatown. She became deaf in 1957, when she was 33, from an allergic reaction to a vaccine. Her program addressed the needs of adults with hearing loss, especially those for whom few other options existed. The obituary mentions her making 16mm films to train herself to read lips in the 1960s, and publishing an ASL dictionary; and that in recent years she worked on creating educational software. Oscar-winning director Jessica Yu is making a documentary about McKinney and her work--if the obituary piques your interest, keep an eye out for the film's release.

RIP: Nancy Eiesland (1964-2009)

[Image: a black-and-white portrait of Nancy Eiesland, from her faculty webpage]

Sad news: Nancy Eiesland of Emory University has died this week, from cancer. If you're interested in how disability studies scholarship might inform the sociology of religion, you won't get far without running into some of Nancy Eiesland's work, especially The Disabled God (Abingdon Press 1994) and Human Disability and the Service of God (an edited collection, Abingdon Press 1998).

Eiesland wrote last year in a campus publication about her lifelong experiences with surgeries and pain and medication, noting "for most of us, pain will be an ordinary partner in an ordinary life." Her colleague and friend Christian Scharen has this remembrance. According to the Facebook group "Friends of Nancy Eiesland," a memorial service is being planned for the afternoon of March 22, in Cannon Chapel on campus.

RIP: Harriet McBryde Johnson (1957-2008)

Death is natural and necessary, but not just. It is a random force of nature; survival is equally accidental. Each loss is an occasion to remember that survival is a gift. I owe it to others to make good use of my time. When I die, I might as well die alive. (Too Late to Die Young, p. 16)

News from the South Carolina Protection and Advocacy Office is that disability rights activist, lawyer, and writer Harriet McBryde Johnson passed away last night. She was 50 years old. (Can't find any official news reporting this yet, so I'll keep watch and link when I do.)

UPDATE: Obituary in Thursday's Charleston Post and Courier. Thanks to Beth Haller for alerting us to the tribute site to Harriet that has been created by Laura Hershey of Crip Commentary.

RIP: Jim Hayes (1949-2008)

A whole generation of people who started disabled student services and campus wheelchair sports teams is passing away. I caught this obituary from over the weekend. Jim Hayes was born in Fort Worth, Texas, in 1949. He injured his spinal cord in a diving accident on his 18th birthday. Hayes went on to be student body president at his junior college, then president of the Handicapped Student Association at the University of Texas-Arlington. After his graduated in 1974, he took a job on the Arlington campus, launching the Office for Students with Disabilities. Later, he was the ADA compliance coordinator on campus.

Jim Hayes also had a lifelong passion for sports. He started wheelchair basketball and wheelchair tennis programs at UTA. In 2000 he became full-time coach of the Moving Mavs --who won seven National Wheelchair Basketball titles under Hayes' direction. Hayes was a wheelchair road racer himself; he won a gold medal at the 1984 Paralympics, and he volunteered at the National Veterans Wheelchair Games. In 2004, one of his former students, Randy Snow, became the first wheelchair athlete inducted into the Olympic Hall of Fame. UTA students or alumni have represented their home nations in every Paralympics Summer Games since 1984. As a result of Jim Hayes' work, the UTA sports program was one of the first in the US to give full athletic scholarships to physically-disabled students.

Hayes died Friday, at the age of 58.

RIP: Harlan Hahn (1939-2008)

Just saw the news that Harlan Hahn, a political science professor formerly at USC, a disability rights activist, and an important figure in the founding and development of disability studies in policy research, has died at the age of 68. Some of Harlan Hahn's online writings:

"Toward a Politics of Disability: Definitions, Disciplines, and Policies"
"Good Jobs, Good Benefits (but not for disabled workers)" at Ragged Edge (2006)
"Love, Sex, and Disability: Maintaining Interest and Intimacy" (transcript of a conference appearance with Sharon Bacharach)

ADDED LATER: Beth Haller has this remembrance.

RIP: John Tracy (1924-2007)

Today's LA Times carries the obituary of John Tracy, the son of actor Spencer Tracy. In 1942, John's mother Louise Treadwell Tracy helped to found a clinic for deaf children and their families at USC, which became the John Tracy Clinic, a well-known Los Angeles resource for families seeking evaluation and intervention for their preschool-aged children with hearing impairments. They also have a program for deaf-blind preschoolers. Services from the John Tracy Clinic are free of charge, and oralist in orientation. (Read about one blogging mom's experiences at a recent JTC summer training here.)

John Tracy, who was deaf from birth, worked in the art department at Walt Disney as a young man, until he also began to lose his eyesight (he learned that his deafness was caused by Usher syndrome, which usually brings blindness later in life). In 2003, John Tracy was asked what message he'd want to pass along to deaf children today, and he replied: "I want to let the kids know they can live a full life. Sports, schools, hobbies, interests, dating, marriage, have a family, drive a car--all of it." Tracy is survived by his younger sister, his son, and three grandchildren.

RIP: J. Kutty (1984-2007)

Noted Tamil performer J. Kutty has died, after a fall at a hotel in Paramakudi. Kutty, born Philip Breet Mankoshy, was just 23 years old. He is best known for his role in "Dancer," a 2005 Tamil film about a one-legged dancer, based in part on his personal story. Kutty lost his own right leg in a motorcycle accident in 1998. He was in Paramakudi to perform at a temple festival with an arts ensemble.

RIP: James Warren Sanford (1938-2007)

Today, the excellent California Disability Community Action Network e-newsletter (sent out by its tireless director Marty Omoto) forwarded the Sacramento Bee's recent obituary of James Warren Sanford (free registration required), a disability rights advocate here in California who was best known for his work on public transit accessibility and safety. In 1988 he filed a federal lawsuit that resulted in a settlement under which the regional transit system agreed to train drivers in safe operation of the wheelchair lifts and other devices, and more respectful treatment of senior and disabled passengers.

Sanford was also a ballroom dance enthusiast, husband, father to 12, grandfather to 42 (and great-grandfather to 43!), erstwhile owner of a gold mine in the Sierra Nevada mountains, an adoptee who grew up to become an adoptive parent, a member of the Gray Panthers Sacramento, and co-founder (with his wife) of Participants in Progress, a disability advocacy organization. His name is found throughout commission reports and meeting minutes: the advisory committee of the In-Home Support Services Public Authority of Sacramento County, Sacramento County Adult and Aging Commission, the Sacramento Transportaton and Air Quality Collaborative, etc. etc. etc. When you hear about local government doing something foolish, maybe you think, "somebody should be keeping on eye on those people." Jim Sanford was an eye and a voice in many a tedious meeting. (Well, I assume they were tedious; I'm fairly meeting-averse myself, which makes me all the more grateful for the Jim Sanfords of the world.)

CDCAN is a valuable resource for a lot of reasons, but I always appreciate these notices of people who aren't widely famous--they're just hardworking people who leave a legacy of real change for the better in their communities. Sanford was one of those.

[Image of Sanford from the Sacramento Bee obituary; at that site, it's credited as a 1988 image of Sanford riding the bus, taken by Hector Amezcua]

RIP: Olivia Robello Breitha (1916-2006)

This is my patient identification number to this day. But I am not just a number now. I have finally regained the sense of dignity that was taken from me when I was a child. It's taken a long time for me to feel this way again. I'm glad I stuck it out.

--Olivia Robello Breitha, quoted in May 2003

Today's Los Angeles Times obituary pages bring news that Olivia Robello Breitha has died at the age of 90. Breitha wrote a book, Olivia: My Life of Exile in Kalaupapa (Arizona Memorial Museum Association 1988), about her longtime residence in Hawaii's famous colony for people with leprosy (Hansen's disease). I've got the book right here as I type this--it's really just a booklet, barely topping 100 pages, with lots of photos and a q&a appendix titled "Frequently Asked Questions About Leprosy" (a FAQ before FAQs?). But a fine booklet it is.

Breitha lived at Kalaupapa from the age of 18, when she was diagnosed and taken away to the colony, just two months before she was planning to marry (her intake image is shown above, left); until her death late last month, in a nursing care facility at Kalaupapa. Her memoir records all the minutiae of confinement; her three marriages; her surgeries; her travels after quarantine orders ended. Her advocacy work culminated last year in a Hawaiian state bill protecting the dignity of Kalaupapa's remaining residents (numbering about 30 now). (Here's the obituary from the Honolulu Advertiser, too.) There's a documentary called Olivia and Tim: Very Much Alive (1994), featuring Breitha's story combined with the story of a young man with AIDS, in which the two discuss living with a stigmatized diagnosis.

RIP: Michael Richard, 1948-2006

Today's Los Angeles Times carries a large boxed obituary for musician and photographer Michael Richard, who died in late August at the age of 58, from cancer. Richard became blind in early 2002, after a surgery to remove a tumor behind an eye. Above, his Strata Various 2004, an upward exterior image of the Disney Music Hall in Los Angeles. Over the past summer, he participated in The View from Here, a San Francisco exhibit of works by blind artists. In 2005, he was one of the artists featured in Blind at the Museum, a show and conference at UC-Berkeley. More of his works online: Auto Reflections (2003), A Certain Sheen, Into the Void, Parturition, Rendezvous, and Site Simulacrum.

Willa Klug Baum, 1926-2006

The Berkeley Daily Planet website features an obituary today for Willa Klug Baum, who died recently at the age of 79, following back surgery. Baum was an oral historian, author of an important text on methodology, and a founding member of the Oral History Association. In her work as the longtime director of the Regional Oral History Office at the Bancroft Library, UC-Berkeley, she oversaw and supported many projects, including the collection of oral histories related to the disability rights and independent living movement: the Bancroft's invaluable and growing collection on this topic now contains more than a hundred interviews with the leaders and founders of the movement in the 1970s. Said Baum of her own leadership approach, "I give myself credit for knowing a good idea when I heard it and then working to make it happen." The DRILM collection was one incredibly good idea. RIP, Willa Baum.

Dixie Henrikson, RIP

And speaking of older women.... obituaries like this are turning up a lot lately. This brief notice is from the LA Times today (9 April, p. B15):

Dixie Henrikson, 84; Co-Founder of Agency for Retarded Children
Dixie Henrikson, 84, who co-founded the nonprofit agency Activities for Retarded Children, died of lung cancer Tuesday at her home in Valley Village, said her son, Michael. In 1969, Henrikson became frustrated about the lack of activities available for her developmentally disabled daughter, and with another mother formed an organization to address the problem. Henrikson became executive director and Mary Schallert the associate director of the center, which the women formally incorporated in 1975. Together they organized field trips, athletic competitions and dances for children and adults in North Hollywood, and provided a place where the members could socialize. "A lot of people think Easter and Christmas parties are enough for these kids, and that two functions a year is plenty. But these kids have the same needs as any teenagers, and other teenagers don't say, 'Oh, I've been out this month, so I think I'll stay home now,'" Henrikson told The Times in 1986. Henrikson also conducted the group's English Hand Bell Choir, which performed at United Way functions and holiday celebrations in Los Angeles over the years, including Christmas Eve at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion.

The generation of parents who had developmentally disabled children after WWII, but before the IDEA, included mothers and fathers who worked hard to create programs and opportunities for their kids. Some of those parents were founders of the ARC and other national organizations; some, like Henrikson, got together with another mother and made something local like their North Hollywood project (complete with bell choir). Someone should be catching these folks for oral histories before they're gone--their work was important, and their stories deserve recording.

For further reading:

Barbara Bair, "The Parents' Council and Social Change in Rhode Island, 1951-1970," Rhode Island History 40(November 1981): 144-159.

Katherine Castles, "'Nice, Average Americans': Postwar Parents' Groups and the Defense of the Normal Family," in Steven Noll and James W. Trent Jr., eds., Mental Retardation in America: A Historical Reader (NYU Press 2004).

Kathleen W. Jones, "Education for Children with Mental Retardation: Parent Activism, Public Policy, and Family Ideology in the 1950s," in Steven Noll and James W. Trent Jr., eds., Mental Retardation in America: A Historical Reader (NYU Press 2004).