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Well, first of all, speaking with Ed on the phone. I would speak with Ed once a month
for a period of six or eight months. He’d give me, he’d say – cause I had trouble
getting to a phone. Living in an institution, it’s hard to get to a phone. But I’d speak
to him, and I’d come away from twenty minutes or a half an hour and say, “Okay, here’s
what’s going on. Tell me, does this sound right to you?” And he’d give me advice
and we’d talk. So I would take that and I would use it, but I didn’t really have
an appreciation for this broader movement at that point. I was really focused on getting
out of living in this institution. It wasn’t until we had gotten out of Middlesex and were
living in the community where I had free access to writing and telephone and other things
that I began to realize that there’s this movement going on. And trips to Washington
where I got to meet other advocates when we were starting the laws that created title
7 which was the funding arm for independent living centers. And remember in 1987 going
to Arlington, Virginia and being blown away by this Ballroom filled with people who had
all kinds of disabilities from all over the country and that’s where I met people like
Max Starkloff and Ed Roberts and Ray Zonella and Lex Frieden and all the leaders of the
Independent Living Movement. And I remember flying down there and back with Fred Fay,
who was teaching me how to fly in an airplane. So I think probably in 1976, 77, 78, when
I moved out an got to know people in the broader community did I come to realize that there
was actually a movement. And it wasn’t later that I realized there was a distinction between
the disability rights movement and the independent living movement. I always thought it was the
independent living movement only, but eventually I came to realize that, no, the disability
rights movement came first.