Title Varies Slightly

“Please excuse [TVS] for being absent from school; she was picketing the Federal Building.”

As it turned out, Mom didn’t get to write that note for me, although we were both looking forward to it. For some reason, school was out that day? It must be a trick of memory, because I would have sworn the one-day protest in my city was held several weeks after the hearings Kay at The Gimp Parade records. But if the regulations were signed in late April, I guess we weren’t protesting in May, as I thought. (In much the same way, the enabling regulations for the ADA lagged behind the ceremonial signing of the law itself by many months.)

I would have been just 15, my mother, soon to turn 48. (Not so much older than I am now, and that makes my heart catch in my throat.)

Why were we there? Why was a Presbyterian housewife — a real lady in the best senses of that word — encouraging her daughter to cut school? Spending the day blistering her fair skin with sunburn (the straw hat wasn’t enough, and it was unusually warm) pushing her daughter’s chair so her daughter could hold the protest sign, “Give me my rights!”

To fight for my future. Because at that time, I barely had one.

Let’s rewind a bit, shall we?

As Kay says,

I’ve got lots going on this weekend (and this past week), but didn’t want to pass this anniversary by without reminding those that might not know it that at age 38, I belong to the first generation of disabled Americans who were allowed to attend grade school and high school with our nondisabled peers. There were exceptions, but physically disabled children (and definitely developmentally disabled children) were routinely excluded from all public school interaction with their nondisabled peers, sometimes entirely because they rode on wheels. It is because of the heroes of the 1977 504 sit-ins who demanded that the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 be fully implemented. They said they would wait no longer and they demanded equal access to public buildings. The ADA was possible because of this. My education and ability to sit here and type today was profoundly effected by the actions of these disability rights heroes of the past. Just thirty years ago.

That was my story. When I entered the first grade, I had no prospect of getting a real diploma. Because of the wheelchair, unless law and policy changed, I could not attend “regular school;” all my school years, first grade to senior year, would be in one building. At the end, I would receive a certificate of attendance, which I could take to a community college so that I could enroll in GED classes.

Some children — those who could use the unmodified restrooms without help, speak clearly, and not drool — could have part of their day, “contact classes,” in the attached “regular” elementary school.

My parents were determined that law and policy would change. And it did. I have a real high school diploma, a bachelor’s degree, and a master’s degree — all earned at public establishments and with the “regular kids.”

Thanks, Mom. I miss you. May you celebrate today with the angels and saints, including all the moms and dads and other activists who have gone on ahead. We who are still here slogging along will celebrate too.

We aren’t there yet, but we couldn’t have come so far as we have without you.