RIP John Callahan

Sadly John Callahan has passed away. He was 59 years old and died of complications from his spinal cord injury.

Known mostly for his cartoons, (which appeared for 27 years in Williamette Week), Callahan authored the biography Don't Worry, He Won't Get Far On Foot and a semi-autobiographical animation Quads. Callahan was the only quadriplegic who created a TV cartoon series , called Pelswick.

Read more here.

His site and work can be found here.



Related: Remembering John Callahan. ---Maybe that’s why I see some sense of irony in Callahan dying on the eve of the ADA anniversary. Much of his career was spent finding humor in the tragedies, ugliness and hypocrisies of life, and I can’t recall a single cartoon he ever did that begged for sympathy or compassion (or, in some cases, basic comprehension). He made fun of everything and everyone.



Rest in peace, John.

Sen. Edward Kennedy dies

It is with great sadness that I read this morning about the death of Sen. Ted Kennedy. His family issued the following statement:

"We've lost the irreplaceable center of our family and joyous light in our lives, but the inspiration of his faith, optimism and perseverance will live on in our hearts forever. We thank everyone who gave him care and support over this last year, and everyone who stood with him for so many years in his tireless march for progress toward justice."

You can find other tributes to Sen. Kennedy here.

Eunice Kennedy Shriver 1921-2009

You are the stars and the world is watching you.
By your presence you send a message to every village, every city, every nation.
A message of hope. A message of victory.
The right to play on any playing field?
You have earned it
The right to study in any school?
You have earned it
The right to hold a job?
You have earned it
The right to be anyone's neighbor?
You have earned it

-Eunice Kennedy Shriver

Never Can Say Goodbye

I was working when the news broke about Michael Jackson's cardiac arrest and subsequent death yesterday. I remember Michael when he was very young and singing with the Jackson Five and when they had their TV show. But it's this song that I've always loved the most, one that was played over and over again in the quadrangles at Livingston College in Rutgers University. Livingston was an experiment in diversity back then, and the music that blared across campus was a mixture of folk, Motown, and rock. I spent a year there as an early admission prior to moving across the river to Rutgers College and never got over missing the music in the more sedate setting at Rutgers in New Brunswick.

RIP Michael.



[image description and credit: The photo above is of Livingston College in 1969 prior to its opening. Two male black students, a white female student and white administrator stand in the foreground, talking. Behind them are the dorms set in a quadrangle. A moving truck is shown toward the right as workmen unload mattresses. The photo comes from Rutgers Through the Years website at rutgers.edu and you can view a timeline here. ]

Disability advocate David Robar passes away

David Robar, who sustained a spinal cord injury as a result of a motorcycle accident in his 20's, lived in New Hampshire. Robar helped get the Work Incentive Act passed,which allows people with disabilities to purchase Medicaid insurance. He also spoke at the 2000 Democratic National Convention.

"He was tenacious when it came to the idea that people with disabilities should be considered equal citizens and have opportunities to achieve the American dream," said Clyde Terry, CEO of Granite State Independent Living, where Robar worked since 1992.

A video about David is below.

David Robar, 44 years old, died of pneumonia.

In Memoriam: Sara

Sad news. Sara over at the blog Moving Right Along has passed away. Kay writes about it here, Penny highlights some tributes and some of Sara's blog links here, and Elizabeth writes about Sara too.

Sara left great comments and wrote great posts. I loved her piece on serendipity - the story of the apple. She saw the beauty in our world and her words will echo forever.

"And that," she told her son, "is what we call 'serendipity': finding something especially pleasant where we never would have expected."

Nancy Eisland, Theologian and Sociologist, Dies at 44

Nancy Eisland, author of “The Disabled God: Toward a Liberatory Theology of Disability,” has died.

She pointed to the scene described in Luke 24:36-39 in which the risen Jesus invites his disciples to touch his wounds.

“In presenting his impaired body to his startled friends, the resurrected Jesus is revealed as the disabled God,” she wrote. God remains a God the disabled can identify with, she argued — he is not cured and made whole; his injury is part of him, neither a divine punishment nor an opportunity for healing.

Ms. Eiesland (pronounced EES-lund), who was an associate professor at the Candler School of Theology at Emory University in Atlanta, died not of her congenital bone condition, nor of the spinal scoliosis that necessitated still more surgery in 2002, but of a possibly genetic lung cancer, said her husband, Terry.
via NYTimes.com

Because he loved words

"I want to highlight the creativity within the brain of a cripple and, while not attempting to hide his crippledom, I want instead to filter all sob-storied sentiment from his portrait and dwell upon his life, his laughter, his vision and his nervous normality."
Christopher Nolan, Irish poet and writer 1965-2009

43 year old Christopher Nolan, who had cerebral palsy, died on Saturday after choking on a piece of food on Friday at Beaumont Hospital in Dublin. He was the winner of the Whitbread Award in 1988 for his autobiography "Under the Eye of the Clock: The Life Story of Christopher Nolan", which he refused to allow to be made into a movie "on the grounds that the production would be a sympathy piece, according to the Irish Independent." *

His family issued a statement that Nolan became a writer because he loved words. It was not a sentimental statement, and Christy would have loved that.

[image description: Christopher Nolan is shown in a headshot taken when he was approximately 15 years old, wearing a blue collared shirt.]



*Nolan also wrote Damburst of Dreams, The Banyan Tree and an adaptation of his writings called "Torchlight and Laser Beams" was produced in Dublin in 1988. He received an Honorary Doctorate of Letters in the UK and the medal of excellence from the United Nations Society of Writers and a Person of the Year award in Ireland in 1988.

Women's basketball coach Kay Yow dies

"Almost everybody is dealing with something," Yow said in a 2006 interview. "We're all faced with a lot of tough issues that we're dealing with.

We know we need to just come to the court and let that be our catharsis in a way. You can't bring it on the court with you, but we can all just think of basketball as an escape for a few hours." - Kay Yow

NC women's basketball coach Kay Yow passed away this morning after battling breast cancer since 1987. She was a tireless fundraiser and continued to coach until recently. She relied on her faith.

Yow won more than 700 games in a career filled with milestones. She coached the U.S. Olympic team to a gold medal in 1988, won four Atlantic Coast Conference tournament championships, earned 20 NCAA tournament bids and reached the Final Four in 1998.

She also was inducted into the Naismith Hall of Fame in 2002, while the school dedicated "Kay Yow Court" in Reynolds Coliseum in 2007.

Pat Summitt's comments on the death of longtime friend Kay Yow

Rutgers coach C. Vivian Stringer "deeply saddened" by death of coaching pioneer Kay Yow

What Others Are Saying in Tribute to Yow

[image description: Kay Yow is shown coaching from the sidelines, her right arm up in the air.]

Jan Kemp, who exposed academic abuse for athletes, dies

Jan Kemp, who exposed fraud in athletes' grades at the University of Georgia back in the '80's, has passed away at the age of 59 due to complications of Alzheimer's. After being dismissed for complaining that the school allowed nine football players to remain eligible for he 1982 Sugar Bowl game by "passing" a remedial English course which they'd failed, Kemp filed a lawsuit and ultimately won. She was reinstated and awarded over a million dollars (initially 2.5 million that was reduced). A report confirmed a pattern of academic abuse for student athletes.

Dr. Kemp stated a month after the trial that “All over the country, athletes are used to produce revenue. I’ve seen what happens when the lights dim and the crowd fades. They’re left with nothing. I want that stopped.”

Related:

Heroism of Jan Kemp changed face of college football
via espn.go.com

Before she shed light in the early 1980s on Georgia's preferential treatment for academically unprepared athletes (including grade changes in remedial courses), there was no such thing as national academic standards for freshman eligibility. There were no academic reporting forms documenting what kind of students schools were bringing in to play sports, or how many graduated, or how many maintained satisfactory progress toward a degree. There were no major financial commitments to helping jocks succeed in the classroom -- no state-of-the-art academic centers, and very few fully funded academic support staffs.

If schools didn't care whether their athletes got an education, nobody was there to call them on it. Until Kemp did.

College Athletes Guided toward Major in Eligibility

Graduation Gap for blacks, whites widen as bowl-team rates rise

Graduation rates for athletes reach record level of 79%

Trying to Put the 'Dumb Jock Myth' to Rest

It's Not an Adventure, It's a Job

RIP Odetta

Just heard that Odetta passed away. The American folk music legend died yesterday at the age of 77 due to heart disease.


from the associated press:
In spite of failing health that caused her to use a wheelchair, Odetta performed 60 concerts in the last two years, singing for 90 minutes at a time. Her singing ability never diminished, Yeager said.

"The power would just come out of her like people wouldn't believe," he said.

With her booming, classically trained voice and spare guitar, Odetta gave life to the songs by workingmen and slaves, farmers and miners, housewives and washerwomen, blacks and whites.

First coming to prominence in the 1950s, she influenced Harry Belafonte, Bob Dylan, Joan Baez and other singers who had roots in the folk music boom.

She considered herself a musical historian rather than a folk singer, saying in an interview with the Washington Post that "humans developed music and dance because of fear, "fear of God, fear that the sun would not come back, many things. I think it developed as a way of worship or to appease something. ... The world hasn't improved, and so there's always something to sing about."

She is remembered by many as a civil rights beacon, with her August 1963 performance of O Freedom in the Washington march.

Rosa Parks, the woman who launched the boycott of segregated buses in Montgomery, Alabama, was once asked which songs meant the most to her. "All the songs Odetta sings," was Parks' reply.

A video about the March on Washington is shown below.

For Odetta and many other survivors of the Civil Rights Movement, the election of Barack Obama as president signaled a fulfilling chapter in the struggle. As she sank toward death in New York City, Odetta had an Obama poster taped on the wall across from her bed. Hospitalized with kidney failure on Monday, she kept willing herself to live because, her manager Doug Yeager wrote on a fansite just before her death, "Odetta believes she is going to sing at Obama's inauguration and I believe that is the reason she is still alive." via time.com

Carol Ann Campbell passes away

Former Philadelphia city council member Carol Ann Campbell has passed away. She was responsible for the creation of the Committee of the Disabled and was an advocate for people with disabilities.

Father Dan has passed away

Fr. Dan Schuh, pastor of St. Susanna's parish, passed away overnight. He was diagnosed in April 2007 with ALS.

I blogged about Fr. Dan this past week, having seen his photo on the back of New Mobility magazine. He was a widower who became a priest in 2003 and was much beloved by his parishioners.

Archbishop Daniel Pilarczyk called Schuh’s death a “sad surprise.”

“He was a dedicated priest and a real father to his people,” Pilarczyk said in a statement issued through Andriacco. ”His death leaves us all poorer.” via communitypress.cincinnati.com

Sister Emmanuelle dies

Sister Emmanuelle, known for her good works among the disenfrachised, has died in France at the age of 99. She was revered for her "candor and caring". {image description: Sister Emmanuelle is shown in the photo at left, smiling, wearing glasses and her habit.]

Her work advocating for the poor spanned many years and has been likened to that of Mother Teresa. She formed the Sister Emmanuelle Association, a charitable organization. Her autobiography will be released Friday.

From the NY Times obituary,:

After she took her vows — in either 1929 or 1931, according to varying reports — she taught in schools in Turkey, Tunisia and Egypt. In 1971, when she was 62, she received permission from her order for what had long been her desire, to move to Cairo and live among the poorest of its citizens in Ezbet El Nakhl, a slum whose residents, known as zabbaleen, share space with refuse, sorting and recycling it for the city, and scavenging in it, too. There she lived in a one-room hut for 22 years, while helping to establish schools, clinics and play areas.

The Sister Emmanuelle Association, which she founded in 1980, eventually extended its work to Brazil, Burkina Faso, Haiti, the Philippines, Senegal and Sudan.

She returned to France in 1993 and became an outspoken advocate for the rights of the poor.

See also Swiss Association of Friends of Sister Emmanuelle

Soeur Emmanuelle (Wikipedia)

Lights on Broadway will dim for Paul Newman tomorrow

Tomorrow night at 8 p.m., the lights on Broadway will be dimmed for Paul Newman, who starred in five Broadway shows.

Newman appeared in five Broadway productions, starting in 1953 in William Inge's "Picnic." He then appeared in Joseph Hayes' thriller "The Desperate Hours," in 1955, followed by Tennessee Williams' "Sweet Bird of Youth" in 1959.

Newman co-starred with his wife Joanne Woodward in James Costigan's comedy "Baby Want a Kiss" in 1964. His last Broadway appearance was as the stage manager in a 2002 revival of Thornton Wilder's "Our Town," for which he received a Tony nomination. via foxnews.com

Paul Newman has passed away

..at the age of 83 from cancer.

Paul Newman, the Academy-Award winning superstar who personified cool as an activist, race car driver, popcorn impresario and the anti-hero of such films as "Hud," "Cool Hand Luke" and "The Color of Money," has died. He was 83.

Newman died Friday after a long battle with cancer at his farmhouse near Westport, publicist Jeff Sanderson said. He was surrounded by his family and close friends. via NY Times.com

His long and illustrious acting career is what most people will remember him for, although he was very active in setting up camps for seriously ill kids, as shown in the video below about the Hole in the Wall camps. The camps are free and provide 24 hour medical care. Paul Newman is shown at camp with some of the children in the photo at left. He will be missed, now that he's gone through "the hole in the wall".

Children loved him

Bozo died over this weekend.

I used to think that he was real when I was a kid. I never thought there was a person under that makeup. I figured Bozo walked around like that all of the time, that he was a clown 24/7. Until, of course, my older brother straightened me out about that, the same way I was straightened out about Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny.

It reminds me of a little boy who was about six who ran alongside me in my wheelchair. His father kept telling the boy to get away from me. Instead of this deterring the kid, he began to run faster alongside me. And then his father put an end to it by grabbing the boy and pulling him away. "That's wrong!" the father said. "You leave people like that alone."

"But I'm playing!" the boy wailed.

I never mind when kids approach me. There's no greater opportunity to teach them not to be afraid of people with disabilities. If it's a cool wheelchair or colored wheels that attracts them, that's okay. After all, kids are- well - kids. They even believe Bozo the clown is real.

There's a magic to childhood that needs to be carefully handled. A child's imagination and curiosity grow through play and sometimes, although it's appropriate to set limits, there's also a need to see that a person on a mobility device to them looks like a new friend who gets around a different way.

I love that kids relate that way to disability. I wish more adults did.



[visual image: A photo of Bozo the clown is shown. He has white face makeup on, red lips, a big red nose, and a red wig. ]

In Memoriam: Harriet McBryde Johnson

Attorney and activist Harriet McBryde Johnson has passed away.

Harriet became a civil rights attorney as a result of dealing with disability issues, according to the article. She also authored a number of books, including an autobiography and a children's book. I remember her for the NY Times article encapsulating her visit with Peter Singer called Unspeakable Conversations and her Slate article entitled Not Dead At All, defending Congress' reaction to Terri Schiavo and this one: I Might be In Terri's Bed Soon.

Publisher's Weekly wrote about her autobiography, entitled Too Late to Die Young, what I will leave here as a tribute:

Johnson, who was born with a congenital neuromuscular disease, wants kids with disabilities to grow up "prepared to survive," not merely waiting to die. Equally problematic for the spirited lawyer are media heroes like the late Christopher Reeve, who revived "telethon melodrama" by displaying himself as "a disability object, presumably tragic but brave, someone to gawk at." Johnson, whose law practice specializes in disability advocacy, has a personal assistant, a motorized wheelchair and a supportive circle of family and friends that make her active, satisfying life possible. Readers inclined to feel sorry for people with disabilities, to offer them prayers or a pat on the head—Johnson has endured both—should spare them the very real burden of providing "disability awareness training to everyone who happens by," and read Johnson's feisty book instead.
via Amazon.com

She will be remembered by many as a trailblazer, a role model and a beloved friend. Her family and friends are in my prayers.
[visual description: A photo of Harriet McBryde Johnson is shown. She is seated in her wheelchair, looking forward, her right hand up to her chin, smiling.]

UPDATE: Her obit in the NY Times is here.

My grandmother called him Carlton Heston

She could never get his name right.

"Charlton," I'd say as I watched Spartacus over and over again.

"That Carlton Heston sure is good looking," she'd say.

He was. It was hard to pick which role I liked him in more, although it was between The Greatest Show on Earth and Spartacus for me. I never was convinced he was Moses, even when he held up the Ten Commandments. If Moses had looked like that, I just don't think anyone would have ever wanted to leave the desert.

But back to Carlton- I mean Charlton. That was the problem with living with my grandmother. After a while you started to make the same mistakes. I'd be with a friend and say Carlton or one of her Irish sayings and they would look at me funny. Like when I said "He's so good looking he's dangerous."

I suppose that was true and is true of celebrities in general. We tend to ascribe more to it when a celebrity picks up a cause than when one of us plain folks does. So when they speak up for any cause, they receive publicity and the cause becomes "blessed by their presence", so to speak. I knew Heston supported the NRA.

But I hadn't seen these photos of him marching in support of civil rights at a MLK rally, nor did I know he had picketed a whites only restaurant down south in the early 60's.

[In the NY Times photo, Heston is shown carrying a sign that reads "All men are created equal- Jefferson" in front of the Anna Maude cafeteria back in 1963. To the left is a police officer with his arms folded. Behind him are other protestors, carrying signs that can be partially read to say "God is love" and "...communism...by..ending racism". To the right of the photo, African-American women stand, clapping.]

So now, I must say, this is my favorite role for him. I'm not going to discuss why he chose to participate in these events or why he stopped and didn't participate in more civil rights causes. I'm just going to post the photo up as another image of that Carlton Heston, an epic movie star who died of Alzheimer's at the age of 84 with a curmudgeonly reputation, and let readers decide for themselves what to do with it.

Ave Maria, Pavarotti style

Final services were held yesterday for the beloved tenor (click link above for article), at which a duet with his father of Panis Angelicus was played.



Ave Maria, sung by Pavarotti