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bjbjD Well, it wasn t, you know, you didn t see that many people with disabilities on
a daily basis. You know, there were depositories or nursing homes to some extent. However,
Denver, early on, because of Craig Hospital you have a high incidence of MS in this particular
region; you had an overrepresentation of people with disabilities. And the other thing, too,
there was a school, as you may know children with disabilities were not entitled to a free
and appropriate public school education before 1973. But there was a school called Beatrice
School, back I want to say, the 50 s and a number of informed parents who wanted their
kids to go to this school, children who had severe disabilities, if they were in Texas
or Kansas or somewhere, there were no options so people came to Colorado because it was
an opportunity to get an education for their kids. Just like Berkley, a lot of you talk
to people who are involved in Berkley and you know years ago, you d say oh, you re from
Berkley, and well I m not really from Berkley, I m from Mississippi or I m from Tennessee
or I m from New York but I went to Berkley because that s where there opportunity is.
So, there are some enclaves throughout the country. So I think probably Denver more so
than others, and Wade was a master of the media. He really knew how to get the media
involved. He had a great mind. He could articulate things that, you know, people were struck
by and I think some of the actions we had very early on, the media was very, very interested.
It was very novel and people with disabilities demonstrating. So I think Wade made people,
but I m not really sure you saw a lot of people necessarily on the street because there really
weren t much in the way of home and community based services and for people who live independently,
unless you were very wealthy, you may not have had the resources, a power chair and
the attendant services, to support that independence. I wanted to also talk about a couple other
things with Michael Smith. Michael, and I think this will give you an idea of Michael
and his spirit, I don t remember the occasion, but I believe it was when Atlantis first started
in 1975. We were going on a big party, and I just don t remember where it was, but Michael
was so weak, he couldn t even sit in his wheelchair but he wanted to go to the party. So one of
the attendants had a pick-up and we literally took him in his bed, you know, lifted him
up in the bed, I don t know how many people did it, put him in the pick up, and he laid
down in the bed and went to the party. I think that was just reflective of his spirit. And
I think, to the credit of Atlantis, when we were getting people out of the nursing home,
a lot of folks were saying Michael s going to die. If he gets out of the nursing home,
he will die and you re going to have the leg in your face and people say see, he gets out
of the nursing home and he dies. Well, it was inevitable he didn t have a lot longer
to live, and I remember taking a real firm stance saying my goodness, this is his dream
and he is going to die, and let him die in his own place rather than in the nursing home.
It was a great decision and I think the last few months of Michael s life were terrific.
He had his own place and his own place was were the Atlantis office was so people would,
he would get to see a lot of people during the course of the day and schmooze with some
of the other members of the community as well. hK)0 hK)0 hK)0 gdK)0 urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags
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