Half the Student Body

“If we had known the severity of your handicap, you would not have been admitted.”  That is what the law school averred, in 1960, when he was wheeled into class – speaking intentionally in the passive, because he could not wheel himself, nor could he write or type, turn the pages of his textbooks, raise his hand in class, feed himself, or use the restroom.  “We don’t have the facilities for you.”

Our anger was a fury sparked by profound injustices.
And with that rage we ripped a hole in the status quo.

But having arrived somehow at the school, he kept rolling on.

I call for a revolution that will empower every single human being
to govern his or her life.

Roommates hoisted him to the floor and turned on the shower so he could roll around to bathe.  Women gathered at his door each morning to greet him and push him to campus.  Law students took long notes longhand, holding them up for him to memorize one page at a time.

Disability is an art.  It’s an ingenious way to live.

At the phrase “I need to” Nelson took him to the restroom, lifted him from his chair, lowered his trousers, clasped him from behind to hold him up at the urinal, or set him on the commode, then tidied and dressed him and took him back to class.

I am different, not less.

Sitting at a study table, when he sneezed from a cold, his head flopped over and hit the table with a bang.  He lifted his head just in time for another sneeze and thump.  A clang every time.  One could not very well hold his head all afternoon in anticipation of a sneeze.  The sneeze simply erupted when it wished, with a heavy clonk on hardwood.

I’m already healed.  Just because I can’t walk doesn’t mean I’m not whole.

He graduated from college.  He slogged through law school.  He was their friend, and they were his friends.  They helped him: half the student body.  He ennobled them by inviting them to join him on his journey.

When everyone else says you can’t, determination says, YES YOU CAN.

A student in a wheelchair, whose name I never knew.  He graduated from that law school where they tried to tell him No.  He became an attorney in the U.S. Patent Office in Washington, D.C.  And he married a lovely girl.  And he fathered dear children.  And he lived a life full and long.

Alone we can do so little.  Together we can do so much.

Quotations from these Powerful Able-Disabled:
-Judy Heumann
-Justin Dart
-Neil Marcus
-Temple Grandin
-Ed Roberts
-Robert Hensel
-Helen Keller

(Image of Stephen Hawking by Gordon Johnson from Pixabay)

Roger is a municipal attorney, homebody poet and essayist, and amateur naturalist.  Roger is the author of Rabbit Lane: Memoir of a Country Road and A Time and A Season.  Rabbit Lane tells the true life story of an obscure farm road and its power to transform the human spirit.  A Time and A Season gathers Roger’s poems from 2015-2020, together with the stories of their births.  The books are available in print and for Kindle at Amazon.  See Rabbit Lane reviewed in Words and Pictures.