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From: moth@dartmouth.edu (Tom Leathrum)
Newsgroups: misc.handicap
Subject: A Couple of Stories...
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Date: 23 Aug 90 04:06:41 GMT
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Index Number: 9940

It has been a while since I have put up a serious posting to this
group (since January?), and I have accumulated a couple of
interesting stories.  I don't make any pretense of hoping that
telling you these stories will cure anything, I just want to get
them off my chest.  This is going to be a bit long....

The first story is about something my mother and little brother
(not so little anymore, really -- he'll be 18 in September) went
through last Spring down in South Carolina.  A year ago September,
Roger began in a program which took students from the "Center for
Exceptional Children" where he had been and placed him and several
others from the Center in a class in the local high school.  In the
meantime, a lawsuit had been filed to get the Center closed down
(its very existence is in violation of Federal law) and take all
the remaining students from the Center into programs like the one
Roger is in.  The school district, becoming both more sensitive to
the students involved and more aware of the laws they have been
stepping on for far too many years, looked to this pilot program
for some indication of what to do next.  Based on the overwhelming
success of my little brother's class, they agreed to shut down the
Center effective *this* September.

The parents of children still at the Center pitched a hissy-fit.
It was all over the local television news programs for several
weeks.  Due to all the commotion, the district agreed to delay
closing the Center for another year.  The parents think of this as
a victory -- the people involved in Roger's class, including the
teacher, the principal of the high school, and many of the parents,
think of this as a year to educate the remaining parents.  One
mother of a child still in the Center said, in front of the
television cameras, that her own child "couldn't handle" a regular
class.

One of the girls in Roger's class can't feed herself, and has many
problems which that mother probably would recognize from her own
child.  When she marched up to the stage at graduation to get her
diploma, the entire senior class gave her a standing ovation.  I
wish that that mother could have been there.

The second story happened to me last week.  I have been
volunteering since early July at a residence for severely
handicapped near where I live here in New Hampshire.  I haven't
been doing much, really, just visiting for several hours on
weekends and often taking some of the clients out to community
events.  (Understand, I have done this kind of work professionally
before, and as the clients and staff there get used to me I am
taking on a more active role at the residence.)  Last week, the
residence got a set of tickets to go see an opera in the nearby
town of Lebanon, NH  (I don't plan on pulling any punches here).
We (myself and one full-time staff person) took two clients to the
show.

There are a few things that should be explained before I go on with
the story.  First of all, the Lebanon Opera House is inside the
Lebanon Town Hall/City Offices building, and I believe that the
theater is run by the town.  If that building qualifies as
wheelchair accessible, it does so by the skin of its teeth.  We had
to enter through the Lebanon City Offices entrance at the side of
the building, then (with nothing to guide us) find the elevator and
go up two stories.  I will admit, the elevator was reasonably nice,
even if it was a bit small for the wheelchairs.

We reached the theater and were shown to our seats.  The ushers
were ill-prepared to deal with two people in wheelchairs and two
attendants.  Our seats were inappropriately placed near one of the
narrow inner aisles -- the wheelchairs would block the aisle.  Fire
code, you know.  So, with management approval, we moved to the side
isle (which is much wider).  We also moved back to within two rows
of the back of the theater, away from the crowd, since we were
expecting to leave around intermission anyway.  After some
arranging (to keep the aisle reasonably open -- fire code again),
we settled into our seats and the music started.  The overture was
nice, and we all enjoyed the first part of the show.  About fifteen
minutes into the show, management confronted us, asking us to move
the wheelchairs to the very back of the theater, saying we were
being "disruptive."  Both clients were enjoying the show, but they
expressed their satisfaction with the performance by fidgeting in
their chairs "rocking," some would say.  This did present a bit of
a problem for one of them, because the brakes on his wheelchair
were slipping.  The aisles are sloped.  I spent what little of the
show I saw with my foot under his wheel.  About five minutes after
we were asked to move to the back, management returned.
Apparently, this wasn't good enough -- we were still being
"disruptive."  The woman who had asked us to move back asked us if
"going outside for a minute would upset them."

Enough is enough.  We left.

I am working on getting a formal complaint of some sort written by
the administrative people at the residence.  As a "mere" volunteer,
my anger wouldn't do much good with the theater people, but I have
gotten the right people at the residence involved -- something good
will come of this yet.

Oh, I still haven't given you the punchline:  the performance we
attended was a benefit for United Way.

Regards,
Tom Leathrum
moth@dartmouth.edu