Disability in the Presidential Campaign of 2012: Abram Powell

Saw this ad/video today from the Obama campaign, featuring Abram Powell, a deaf African-American auto worker from Michigan.  I like how specific it is to his life--it's not a generic disability message--and it's full of photos, and we see him speaking to an audience in ASL, etc. 
Seen other ads, from any campaign, that focus on disability themes? Drop a link in comments.

Dilyn y Fflam

We will have come of age when the media criticise our performances and are negative about us in the same way as they are for other sportspeople rather than constantly praising us as being ‘brave’. Paralympians are achievers who do not necessarily wish to be portrayed constantly as ‘overcoming adversity’.”

--Dame Tanni Grey-Thompson

This quote (and one of Dame Tanni's racing chairs) is part of an exhibit at the National Library of Wales, "Following the Flame" (Dilyn y Fflam), which opened over the weekend. The exhibit is about Olympic history, in anticipation of the 2012 London Games, and has several focuses or themes, including Welsh athletes, and paralympians. Simon Richardson was the guest at the opening. There are photos at the NLW's Facebook page; looks worth a visit.

January 16: Francis Kompaon (b. 1986)

[Video description: scenes of Papua New Guinea, including beaches, food markets; then we see Francis Kompaon, a dark-skinned young man in a red athletic jersey. There are interviews with him, translated by a voice-over in English, and scenes of him running, playing soccer, and walking in a market. He describes going to school and loving sports from a young age. There is also an interview with his coach, Bernard Chan. A woman's voice narrates the video, telling his history of achievements in competition, and his plans for the future.]

[How do I find the new captioning thing for YouTube videos? I've heard it exists, but this is the first time I wanted it.--PLR]

New Guinean athlete Francis Kompaon turns 25 today. He's a sprinter in the T46 category of paralympic competition--he was born without a full left arm. At the 2008 Paralympic Games in Beijing, Kompaon won the silver medal in the 100m event. Besides the personal achievement, Kompaon had earned the first Paralympic medal ever for Papua New Guinea--in fact, the first ever medal for that country at the Olympic level, period. The PNG government awarded him with funding to attend college in Australia, where he can access better training facilities.

16 February: Theresa Goh (b. 1987)

[Visual description: A photograph of swimmer Theresa Goh, wearing a black competition suit and swimcap, sitting in a wheelchair, smiling]

"I'm fine with it. I [wouldn't] be swimming or where I am today if I weren't disabled."
--Theresa Goh

A sports birthday today--and a summer sport, in case you've had quite enough snow and ice by now, on TV or out the window (or both).

Singapore's Theresa Goh Rui Si was born on this date in 1987. She was premature, and had spina bifida that required surgery in her first months. Goh has always used a wheelchair. At age 5, she started swimming, and by age 12 she was swimming in meets. Since her teens, she's been a world-class swimmer in Paralympic events. She won in four different events at the Danish Open in 2007; at the Paralympics in Beijing the next year, she competed in four events and was her team's flagbearer. This past December, she earned a gold medal at the IWAS World Wheelchair & Amputee Games in India. She's planning to train for the 2012 Paralympics in London.

Goh turns 23 today.

October 14: Katarzyna Rogowiec (b. 1977)

Just trolling around today's birthdays on Wikipedia, spotted Paralympian Katarzyna Rogowiec. She was born on this date in 1977, in Rabka-Zdrój, Poland. At age 3, she lost both hands in an accident with farming equipment (she doesn't remember the event). She's an economist by education and occupation. Rogowiec won two gold medals at the 2006 Turin Paralympics, as a cross-country skiier, and she's the current world champion paralympian in the biathlon event as well. Just last week she finished second in the women's cross-country skiing 15km event at the Paralympic Winter World Cup held in Solleftea, Sweden.

Enrique Oliu

[Image description: Enrique Oliu standing in a press box, with a baseball diamond in the background; he's wearing a shirt, tie, headphones, and credentials, and smiling; he has dark eyebrows and greying hair]

I always run into skeptical people, but I've never had any problem doing my job.

--Enrique Oliu

Enrique Oliu is the Florida broadcaster covering the World Series for Spanish-language audiences in Tampa Bay. Oliu is blind. Born in Nicaragua in 1962, he attended the Florida School for the Deaf and Blind in St. Augustine as a child, and graduated from the University of South Florida. He's been covering baseball professionally since 1989, and now covers all of Tampa Bay's games, as well as spring training camps in Mexico and Venezuela. "I played this sport and a bunch of others. Adapted, but I played. Blind or not blind, I have an opinion and I just state mine. That's what people want."

RIP: Jim Hayes (1949-2008)

A whole generation of people who started disabled student services and campus wheelchair sports teams is passing away. I caught this obituary from over the weekend. Jim Hayes was born in Fort Worth, Texas, in 1949. He injured his spinal cord in a diving accident on his 18th birthday. Hayes went on to be student body president at his junior college, then president of the Handicapped Student Association at the University of Texas-Arlington. After his graduated in 1974, he took a job on the Arlington campus, launching the Office for Students with Disabilities. Later, he was the ADA compliance coordinator on campus.

Jim Hayes also had a lifelong passion for sports. He started wheelchair basketball and wheelchair tennis programs at UTA. In 2000 he became full-time coach of the Moving Mavs --who won seven National Wheelchair Basketball titles under Hayes' direction. Hayes was a wheelchair road racer himself; he won a gold medal at the 1984 Paralympics, and he volunteered at the National Veterans Wheelchair Games. In 2004, one of his former students, Randy Snow, became the first wheelchair athlete inducted into the Olympic Hall of Fame. UTA students or alumni have represented their home nations in every Paralympics Summer Games since 1984. As a result of Jim Hayes' work, the UTA sports program was one of the first in the US to give full athletic scholarships to physically-disabled students.

Hayes died Friday, at the age of 58.

March 6: Pete Gray (1915-2002)

[Image description: a black-and-white publicity photo of a one-armed baseball player in a St. Louis uniform, autographed "Pete Gray"; he's tossing a ball in the air, while nearby his glove is midair]

Ask most baseball fans today to name a one-handed player in the Major Leagues, and they're likely to say Jim Abbott--and that's a good answer. But ask someone older, from northeastern Pennsylvania, and you're as likely to hear the answer "Pete Gray." Pete Gray was born Peter Wyshner in Nanticoke PA, this date in 1915, the son of immigrants from Lithuania; his right arm was amputated at age 6, after a wagon accident. Wyshner lived in coal-mining country, so there were plenty of others with accidental injuries and lost limbs in his community--and it wasn't considered too unusual that he'd still want to play baseball. When he wasn't working as a water boy at the Truesdale Colliery, of course.

He played in the minor leagues during the WWII, when so many of the usual players were in uniform; then in 1945, he was picked up by the St. Louis Browns, and played 77 games in the majors as an outfielder. He was famous for the speed with which he could catch a ball in his glove, toss the ball in the air, remove the glove, grasp the ball, and throw it (that's the maneuver depicted in the publicity still above). As Pete Gray, he was featured in newsreels, a novelty story intended to inspire returning troops and attract audiences to the games. He stayed in baseball's minor leagues into the early 1950s, then retired to Nanticoke. His later years were hard; he died in a nursing home in 2002, after years of alcoholism and very little income. Pete Gray's glove is in the Hall of Fame at Cooperstown.

Print sources for further reading:

William C. Kashatus, One-Armed Wonder: Pete Gray, Wartime Baseball, and the American Dream (McFarland & Co. 1995).

William C. Kashatus, "Baseball's One-Armed Wonder: An Interview with the Late Great, Pete Gray," Pennsylvania Heritage (Spring 2003): 30-37.

November 8: Happy 16th Birthday, Aaron Fotheringham!

I don’t think of it as practice, I think of it as a fun way to live my life.

YouTube sensation and extreme wheelchair sports star Aaron Fotheringham is turning 16 this Thursday--somehow. As a mom, I'm just glad to see him wearing his helmet in all his "Hardcore Sitting" videos, like this one from summer 2006, billed as his execution of the world's first wheelchair backflip:

August 26: Rick Hansen (b. 1957)

Canadian Paralympian Rick Hansen (pictured at left, on his "Man in Motion" world tour) is turning 50 today--he was born on this date in 1957, in Port Alberni, British Columbia. He was an athletic kid who excelled in several sports. When he was fifteen, he was paralyzed from the waist down in a car accident. So he turned to wheelchair sports, and was more competitive than ever: he became a national champion player in wheelchair volleyball and wheelchair basketball, and a world-class wheelchair marathoner. Hansen won a gold medal at the 1980 Summer Paralympics.

Hansen's 1985-87 "Man in Motion" tour took him wheeling through more than thirty countries, over 26 months, 40K kilometers, to raise money for spinal cord research and other causes. The wheelchair he used on that tour is now in the museum of the BC Sports Hall of Fame. There are video and audio clips of the news coverage of Hansen's world tour here.

Hansen is now president and CEO of the Rick Hansen Foundation, which raises money for research and support programs related to spinal cord injuries. He's married, and the father of three daughters. There are three Canadian public schools named for Hansen, and one township in Ontario--right next to Roosevelt Township, it is (it was named Stalin until 1986, so I'd guess they were going to change it anyway?).

Bit of 80s trivia: you know the title song for the 1985 film "St. Elmo's Fire"? It's about Rick Hansen. Lyrics include: "Gonna be your man in motion/All I need is a pair of wheels." (See, that never made sense for the movie, but it makes sense now, doesn't it? Mystery solved.)

Kenny Fries on Oscar Pistorius

Memoirist and poet Kenny Fries had an op-ed piece (free registration may be required) in the Washington Post over the weekend, about the recent technical disqualification of runner Oscar Pistorius in a 400m race (he crossed outside his lane, in wet conditions that caused his carbon-fiber "Cheetahs" to slip a bit and slow his time). The applicable governing body has banned any devices involving wheels or springs--but Pistorius's prosthetics involve neither wheels nor springs (um, or maybe that's not quite so*). Oscar Pistorius isn't a great runner because of his Cheetahs; if that were the case, everyone with Cheetahs would be a great runner. So the questions of advantage/disadvantage, technological supports, and athletic achievement are still unfolding. It's been an interesting case to watch, with some parallels to previous stories like Casey Martin's.

As I've noted here before, NHRA drag racing has a very different history with amputee racers and customized prosthetics. Maybe it's because of the sport's literally explosive nature, or because it's already a technology-centered competition. The legendary Don Garlits lost part of his foot in a 1970 track explosion, and had a permanent limp thereafter; he was still racing decades later. Far from putting Garlits out of the running, the incident spurred him to pioneer major safety changes in dragster design. Reggie Showers (pictured at right, holding a prosthetic leg), a drag-bike racer who was a double below-the-knee amputee after an electrocution accident in his teens, wore specialized prosthetics on race day that made him five inches shorter, in an event where a more compact profile is generally considered an advantage. That advantage was never ruled "unfair," and Showers competed for several seasons without controversy.

(A smaller body is also an advantage in Indy 500 racing, and women Indy drivers have been accused of having an unfair advantage because they're smaller, on average--a blatantly sexist charge that has not resulted in women (or men of short stature, for that matter) being banned from Indy cockpits.)

*In comments, Sara says the whole Cheetah functions as a spring. So corrected! I wonder if the rules mean that kind of spring action, or the actual boing-boing curly springs I was picturing. Oh, yes, I really was picturing Wile E. Coyote with his spring shoes, bouncing across canyons (see left)--which, as far as I know, nobody's tried to use in track competitions anyway. Good thing the legs are called "Cheetahs" instead of "Coyotes," I guess...

Unnecessary Roughness

Do we really need this? At left, a print ad for the 2006 Canadian Wheelchair Rugby Championship. (Visual description: black lettering on the face of what appears to be a seriously play-worn wheelchair-rugby wheel, reading "TO PLAY WHEELCHAIR RUGBY YOU HAVE TO BE PHYSICALLY HANDICAPPED AND MENTALLY INSANE.")

The other two ads in the campaign were okay, but this one plays into the cliched idea that being "mentally insane" is all about being heedless of danger, spectacularly self-destructive, and ... entertaining to watch? Busting cliches about one disability group by reinforcing cliches about another disability group just isn't helpful, in the bigger picture.

Congratulations to Tsuchida and Soejima!

The 111th Boston Marathon (the world's oldest annual marathon--they like to point that out) almost didn't run on Monday--Boston was in the path of a big nor'easter that dumped a lot of snow and rain on the whole region. But organizers decided at 4am race day that it should go forward, and it did.

The Wheelchair division winners were both Japanese: Masazumi Soejima for the men (pictured at left) and Wakako Tsuchida for the women. Both are past Paralympic medalists, and Tsuchida has competed not only in track-and-field events, but also in ice sledge speed racing at the Winter Paralympics. Oh, and she had a baby seven months ago....

But wait, there's more. The Boston Marathon has several divisions for disabled athletes. In the visually-impaired division, Americans Adrian Broca and Ivonne Mosquera had the top times. In the mobility-impaired division (in which competitors usually ambulate with prostheses, crutches, or braces), Paul Martin and Amy Palmiero-Winters (pictured at right, not at the Monday race) placed first and second.

Congratulations to all the athletes who participated!

December 15: Chantal Petitclerc (b. 1969)

A world class performance is a world class performance - on a bike, in the pool or in a wheelchair.

--Chantal Petitclerc

Today is the 37th birthday of Canadian athlete Chantal Petitclerc, born on this date in 1969 in Saint-Marc-des-Carrières, Quebec. She had a spinal cord injury in an accident when she was 13. In high school, a coach encouraged her to swim for upper-body strength and overall stamina; at 18, she discovered wheelchair racing, and it turned out that she would become very, very good at that sport: she holds sixteen medals from four Paralympic Games (Barcelona 1992, Atlanta 1996, Sydney 2000, and Athens 2004)--including five gold medals at the 2004 Games. She's also been on the Canadian team for the Commonwealth Games in 2002 and 2006, and the Canadian record holder in five events. And she's been the spokeswoman for Defi Sportif, a Canadian organization for athletes with disabilities.

Petitclerc caused a bit of scandal in 2004, when she turned down a trophy from Athletics Canada--it's awarded each year to the track-and-field athlete of the year. Petitclerc was to be co-winner with Perdita Felicien, a hurdler who had a disappointing performance in the Athens Olympics that year. Petitclerc considered the co-winner status to be patronizing. "To me, it's really a symptom that they can't evaluate the value of a Paralympic medal - that it's easier to win a Paralympic medal than an Olympic medal," she explained. "That may have been true 15 years ago. That's not the case any more."

In 2005 Petitclerc was named Canada's female athlete of the year, as well as the Laureus Award, given by sports journalists around the world to the disabled athlete of the year. That same year, she was inducted into the Terry Fox Hall of Fame.

November 14: Silken Laumann (b. 1964)

Before '92 I was a strong person, but I wondered how strong I would be if something bad happened. Then something bad did happen and I didn't wallow in sorrow. I just figured, O.K., what do I do now?

Canadian rowing champion Silken Laumann (left) was born on this date in 1964, in Mississauga, Ontario, the daughter of recent immigrants from Germany. She earned a bronze medal at the 1984 Olympics, and was on the Canadian rowing team for the 1988 Olympics. While training for the 1992 Games, her right leg was badly injured in a collision between two boats. After winning the bronze in Barcelona anyway (two months later), she took off a year for further surgeries and rehabilitation, then returned to win a silver medal in the 1996 Olympics. She's now retired from competition, and does motivational speaking, and advocacy for inclusive and creative children's play and fitness programs, in Canada and abroad (through Right to Play).

Bikes, Motorbikes, and Reggie Showers

Sara at Moving Right Along gave me a great opening for my annual post combining my interests in disability studies and NHRA drag racing. (My 2005 post on the subject is here.) She writes:

If you are an amputee, barring other complications, you can probably ride a bike. You can ride if you are missing an arm -- or two! You can ride if you are missing a leg -- or two!

Which gives me an opening to write about double-amputee motorcycle drag racer (and one-time Temple University student-to-be) Reggie Showers (b. 1964; shown at left). Showers, a "bilateral transtibial amputee" since he was electrocuted in an accident at the age of 14, was a Pro Stock Motorcycle racer, piloting a custom bike down the quarter-mile track at more than 180 mph. Showers began racing in 1989 on the International Drag Bike Association circuit, and won the IDBA championship in 1990. At one point, he held fourteen world records in drag biking. He toured with his prosthetics specialist, Tracy Slemker of Prosthetic Designs, doing educational outreach at racetracks during NHRA events. (His racing legs were specially designed for maximum control and minimum weight--so on race day, he was five inches shorter than he was in his everyday legs.) Showers isn't racing anymore--he finished his pro career after the 2003 season.

Said Showers of his hi-tech legs:

I remember back in the late'70's when the accident happened, being very ashamed of being an amputee or "handicapped" person. The word "handicapped" did not sit well with me. Now, in the year 2000, being so-called "disabled" is pretty trendy, pretty chic - I like to show off my legs, I think they're very trick! I like the stares now, I like when people look at my legs. They look at me walk, and it makes me feel good - it makes me feel proud.

October 23: Gertrude Ederle (1905-2003)

Also born on October 23 (either 1905 or 1906, sources disagree--if the latter, this is her centennial), American swimmer Gertrude Ederle. She began breaking amateur records at the age of 12; by 18, she had won three Olympic medals, and was preparing to cross the English Channel. In 1926, on her second attempt, she made the crossing, hours faster than any man had ever done. She was the first woman to swim the Channel, and was greeted with a tickertape parade on her return to the US.

Why is this a disability history story? Because Ederle was deaf, beginning with the effects of severe measles in childhood. After WWII, Ederle taught swimming for years, to the students at the Lexington School for the Deaf in New York City.

Disability History Image #4: "One-Eyed Frank" McGee

When I was a kid, I read the dictionary for fun (sad maybe, but true). Now, I get some of the same kick from biographical dictionaries. I've been trolling through the very searchable Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online for disability history stories to add to the Disability History Dateline. Mostly, you'll find asylum administrators, 19c. figures in deaf education, and nuns who started homes for "the aged and infirm." But every once in a while, there's someone more offbeat.

"One-Eyed" Frank McGee (b. 1882) was a hockey player, and a good one--he led the Ottawa Silver Seven to three consecutive Stanley Cup championships, 1903, 1904, and 1905. In one 1905 game, he scored a fourteen goals, a record that still stands. Then he retired, in 1907. McGee had lost an eye as a teenager (in a hockey accident), and was thinking maybe he'd get out of the violent sport that could put the remaining eye at risk. But that cautious approach seems to have been short-lived, because in 1915 he enlisted in the Canadian Army to fight in World War I. Family legend says he tricked the examiner to get a passing vision test; but a look at the form itself shows the examiner left the crucial space blank--so maybe he noticed McGee's partial blindness and just decided not to record it. Anyway, McGee was injured in battle, and unfit for duty for seven months, but he insisted on returning to combat duty after recovering. He was killed in France in September 1916, during the Somme offensive. In 1945, he was in the first class of inductees to the Hockey Hall of Fame.