Stone-Hayes Center for Independent Living, celebrating its 15th anniversary this year, hosted the event at the Knights of Columbus Hall on East Fremont Street.
“We all represent something and for something here,” Stone-Hayes Director Dale Parsons said, introducing Barb Pritchard as the keynote speaker.
Both Lester and Barb Pritchard were diagnosed with cerebral palsy at the age of 2. Barb Pritchard said Lester’s parents were told he had no brain function and they should find a “nice” home for him, which she said was the politically correct way of saying in the early 1950s that he should be institutionalized,
Unable to attend grade school in Galesburg, at age 6 Lester attended a residential grade school in Springfield. Although he was able to eventually spend some of his grade school years in Galesburg, thanks to the efforts of his mother to have to accessible rooms built onto a local school, he had to attend a residential high school in Jamestown, N.D.
Barb, who was also diagnosed with visual impairment when she was 2, said the school in Jamestown was run by a woman with a disability.
“She had people on her staff with disabilities,” she said.
Those days before ADA were an even greater challenge for disabled individuals.
“I remember even trying to go for an interview, I’d have to call and find out if the place was accessible,” Barb Pritchard said, adding that she usually called late in the day, hoping to reach a janitor so as not to tip her hand that she was disabled.
“I know Lester hoped to make many of the businesses and buildings in Galesburg more accessible,” she said.
Barb recalled Lester telling her of the evening he got the director of a local nursing home to bring 35 to 40 people to a City Council meeting at the old, non-handicapped-accessible City Hall on South Cherry Street.
“Because of that, they had to change the location of the meeting,” she said, adding that it began a dialogue that eventually resulted in the current, accessible City Hall on West Tompkins Street.
Working with the local center for independent living in Urbana, the city where they lived, Barb and Lester were able, with others, to get Urbana to adopt the third “visitability” ordinance in the country. The ordinance required a non-step entrance into the house, 32-inch hallways, so that someone in a wheelchair could turn around, as well as a bathroom where a disabled person could close the door. Other requirements made it possible for them to visit friends.
As a member of the Illinois Council for Developmentally Disabled, Lester Pritchard and others were able to stop the reopening of the Lincoln Developmental Center and, in 2007, to begin a drive to have the Howe Developmental Center in Tinley Park closed. The center, where 10 percent of the population died suspicious deaths in a 5-year period, was officially closed in June 2010.
Barb said the experiences she and her husband went through in their youth exposed them to years of segregation “and made us more sensitive as to what it is to be isolated.”
She said the big push now is to get developmentally disabled people out of institutions and into the community. A major blow for that effort was struck by a 1999 Supreme Court decision. Elaine Wilson and Lois Curtis, who doctors said were able to live in the community, had to fight the state of Georgia, which did not want them to be allowed to leave the state institution because of the revenue the state would lose.
“They are two of my personal heroes,” Barb Pritchard said. “They didn’t let anyone else decide for them. Lois and Elaine didn’t want to live segregated lives.”
She said that many people in Illinois, which ranks 51st in the U.S., behind all other states and Washington, D.C. — in services and support in the community for disabled people — have “decided to numb themselves from the innate pain that comes from segregation.
“Recently, I witnessed a change,” Barb said. “A change in thinking and acting among the people in the disability community, especially among the young people. I’ve seen change and instead of quietly accepting our plight, we are beginning to stand up and demand our equality. People with disabilities are beginning to assert our real equality. You good folks in Galesburg, I want you to honor Lester’s legacy by participating in this movement for something new in our state.
“Now, I ask you, will you join me and continue to change Illinois?”
The crowd applauded, giving her her answer.
A number of government leaders attended Tuesday’s event, including Galesburg Mayor Sal Garza and state Reps. Don Moffitt, R-Gilson, and Norine Hammond, R-Macomb.
# As posted by The Register-Mail : By JOHN PULLIAM July 27 2011
jpulliam@register-mail.com
Read more of The Register-Mail at: http://www.galesburg.com/
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