Some Friendships Last A Lifetime!

I had a great experience yesterday when three of my close friends from the dorms I lived in in Berkeley during the 1974-'75 school year flew in for a few hours of sharing old memories and making new ones. Karen "Smalley" Bixby called me a couple days ago and asked if she could fly from a conference in Chicago for a few hours and then go back later yesterday afternoon.

I replied, "Of course, that would be great, but I could not come to get you at the airport. Maybe Mike Ross could pick you up and take you back when you needed to fly out?"

Kathy (Keen) Mancuso lives in Houston now and when Karen proposed the idea to Kathy, Keeno was ready to come if she could get good flights with corresponding times.

Here is a picture of the four of us, as they were getting ready to leave:

As always, click on the image to make it larger:

Mike had me order some Chinese take-out food for lunch, which they picked up on the way to my apartment. Karen helped feed me with chopsticks, which she was very adept at using! There is no way I can use those sticks!

The year I was in Putnam Hall was the first year the Physically Disabled Student Program (PDSP) started integrating students with disabilities into the general student population. UC Berkeley was way ahead of its time! The program has since dropped the first word, Physically, from its title and is now known as DSP. It is housed in the Ed Roberts Campus, which is located a few blocks from campus and was started to honor all of the work Ed did around the world for the disability community. I have written about him before and you can find that post by clicking on his name in the labels at the end of this post.

Karen was a Resident Assistant for Freeborn Hall. She went out of her way to make friends with the three students with disabilities that lived in Putnam. It was no easy task since Greg was unable to speak and had to spell everything slowly on his lapboard. Gary lived on the other side of me and spoke very slowly and non-discernible by most people. I became his interpreter and when anyone new would join us at lunch, they would look to me to tell him/her what Gary was trying to say.

Another story everyone remembered fondly was getting my mail because I could not open the mailbox, which was high on the wall and down one floor. When my mother would send pictures of my little brother, Chad who was just a few months old when I moved to Berkeley and he was learning to walk, she would send a half dozen pictures a week of Chad as he grew and changed every week. Mom would write "Do Not Bend" on the envelope in several places!

Whomever got my mail would run up the stairs screaming, "Mike, you got another, 'Do Not Bend'" We all knew what that meant so several people would gather in the lush courtyard right outside the cafeteria and pass around a half-dozen more pictures of Chad looking left, Chad looking right, Chad sitting up, Chad standing up. You name it, Mom will deny this but she was encouraging me to come home in her subtle ways! The funny thing is, it worked!

I tell everyone that asks what was the best thing I have ever done? I tell them, "The second best thing I ever did was move to Berkeley." 

Their response is always, well then what was the best thing you ever did? I always reply, "I moved home." I say that not because of my friends I made in Berkeley and the growing I did on a personal level, but rather how my life has grown in so many ways since moving back, finishing my degree at the University of Minnesota and the changes my life has taken since I left Berkeley in 1975.

Another irony in this move was several years after I moved back and Chad graduated from college he moved to Southern California and has been there for many years now! It was fun for Kathy and Karen to see pictures of Chad now as a forty-two-year-old entrepreneur living in Southern California!

We shared stories of our memories of the fairly short time in our lives where we were actually together and how that school year has made lasting friendships that have lasted more than forty years!

I want to close with a picture of the three of us men who attended our dinner at Trader Vic's Restaurant in San Francisco when I took eight other friends and myself to a four-hour dinner for $150! We had a blast that night and stories abounded about who remembered what from that treat. I like this picture because the three of us all had cool 1970s hair!

Besides Mike Ross In his flashy velvet jacket and me was Doug Hamblin, Mike's roommate.

As always, click on the image to make it larger:

Like I said earlier, the four hours just flew by and I wish it could have lasted longer. I do not believe a minute went by when somebody was not talking, usually while somebody else was telling her or his memory of a particular story!

It always amazes me how all the stages of my life keep coming back in various ways by people who made a difference in that particular piece of my life. At 61, I have a hard time believing I have managed to live in so many places and acquire so many friendships on levels I cannot describe. I have managed to live more than forty-four years with a high-level spinal cord injury and I am feeling the aging process along with everything that goes with my injury. Yet, there are many days I feel like I can turn those numbers around and I feel 16!

As always, I look forward to your comments.

Later,

Mike

Help Me Celebrate Ed Roberts

If you know me, or have read my book, you know I went to the University of California at Berkeley in 1974 through June 1975. It was not a long time, but my time in Berkeley changed my life. The week between Christmas and New Year's 1973, my dad flew with me to Oakland where we were met by the Physically Disabled Student Program's van (PDSP). the van already had two riders. They were Hale Zukas and Ed Roberts.

They were both actively involved in the Independent Living Movement on and around the  campus. I just read an article about Hale who is still active in the movement today.

However, we lost Ed in 1995. Ed Roberts was literally the first person I met when I moved to Berkeley. Little did I know what a huge impact he would have on mentoring me and becoming an international advocate for civil rights for people with disabilities. There is a nice piece on Ed's contribution to the movement on the California.gov's website. You may read it by clicking here. There is even a fully accessible building located in Berkeley called the Ed Roberts Campus which is home to several disability-oriented, non-profit organizations. You may learn more about it at their website by clicking here.

Ed and I became fast friends and spent a lot of time together watching sporting events including several baseball games, football games and the 1975 USA–USSR track meet. I talk about Ed and his influence on me in my book I Still Believe In Tomorrow and how much our friendship meant to me.

The reason the California Department of Rehabilitation is celebrating is it is its 50th Anniversary and they are making a list of their fifty most notable people in their history. Guess who the number one person on that list is?

When Ed first applied to go to school at Cal, he was denied entrance because he he did not get a high school diploma. He did not receive a diploma because he failed to take and pass two classes, physical education and driver's training. Through his persistence of never backing down or allowing the system to say no, he eventually earned an undergraduate degree from UC Berkeley. He became the first student with a severe disability to ever be admitted and graduate from the University California at Berkeley! He certainly was an amazing, inspirational person!

Once Ed got in, that opened the doors to more students. At the time, I did not realize when I went out there the residence program I lived in the first year was only a few years old. Had I known that, now I wonder if I would have even gone. I tell people the second best thing I ever did was going to Berkeley. The inevitable question comes back then, "What was the first?" 

My response is always, "Coming back to Minnesota." 

Berkeley was a great place to go to school with an ever-expanding accessible campus, but I got homesick and came back to Minnesota where I eventually earned my bachelors degree in School and Community Health Education. 

I want to close this post after telling you one more Ed Roberts story. Besides helping to coordinate PDSP, form the first Center for Independent Living, of which there are about six hundred of them now around the country, he was also instrumental in forming the World Institute on Disability (WID). Its work is now reaching worldwide communities. Shortly after I left Berkeley, Governor Jerry Brown named Ed to head California's Department of Rehabilitation. I have always found great irony in the fact the department that once refused to help pay for his college education was later being run by him.

Here is a picture of Governor Brown making the appointment:

Click on the image to make it larger:

As always, I look forward to your comments.

Later,

Mike