COURAGE

Wendy could not walk; she could barely move her wheelchair with her chin, and off she went to tour the US for 32,000 miles to inventory the state of the National Parks!  It all started when she decided that while she could, she would see the Grand Canyon, and discovered that she could not get her wheelchair there. It would not end until she had visited 45 states.

Her disappointment that she could marvel at the Grand Canyon only from a parking lot led to a book to help other disabled people enjoy the National Parks and a campaign for easier access to them.  Her success with the National Parks Service was phenomenal.

Wendy was ultimately awarded the National Multiple Sclerosis Society’s National Education Award, accepted on her behalf by Phil Donahue and Marlo because she was too ill to make the trip at that point.  But in her effort to help others have what she herself wanted:  to live in an accessible place, she discovered other things as well.  Donahue quoted Roth in his acceptance speech:

             "If you do not give up, you will take your soul to the place you want to be."

To go back a little, I met Wendy as a fellow student in college, where she was a non-stop mover.  Phi Beta, dancer, first oboe player, with her own radio show, dear friend always available, I thought we would be friends for life. 

And we were.  After college she went on to get a masters in communication from Stanford, and then started producing for Phil Donahue.  Somewhere along the line, she started getting “tingles and flingles” in her fingers, and then she oddly tripped and broke her foot (not like [pardon the pun] our ‘sure footed’ Wendy).

So she had her diagnostics done, and came up with the shocking—well, let’s face it, it’s always shocking—discovery that she had MS.

No problem said she.  I’ll just keep on keeping on.  And so she did.  She produced for the Donahue show for a number of years, while commuting to NY from his base in Chicago to serve on the Board of Directors of my dance company, among other reasons to visit the Big Apple.

And then she tried moving to NY when his operation did.  This proved difficult for her as NY was less accessible than Chicago for her; people ate out more often in restaurants with steps and thoughtlessly forgot she had trouble getting up them, cab drivers were grim about waiting for her to climb in, her long term boy friend decided he didn’t want to get married after all to someone who was going to “go down hill.”

That was the real blow.  If I could have given him MS at the time, I would have (I still had a lot to learn at that point about compassion, fear and understanding).  Anyway, Wendy produced one last series for the Donahue group, The Human Animal, and decided to move to California where the on and off boyfriend lived, to see what would happen.

I will never forget the day she called me and said, “Bonnie, I am in the backyard, and I can’t get up.  I am all alone.  I can’t move.”  I don’t know who was more scared.  Until that moment I had been in a state of denial, as had she I believe, that this was really happening to her.

Things did not go well for her after that, but luckily her boyfriend stuck around (they eventually married!), and her PLUCK remained. 

So after about 6 months of sitting around, she decided that she wanted to see more of the US in case she got worse.  Off they went, and could not get close to many of the sites they wanted to see!

So Wendy, my dear Wendy, said “THIS WILL NOT DO!”  She got a grant, bought a van, and she and her new husband started what was to become a 32,000 mile tour of the US National Parks in order to write their ground breaking book, Easy Access to National Parks:  The Sierra Club Guide for People With Disabilities.

And she did not stop there.  After the book was published, she worked with the National Park Service to improve accessibility in numerous locations, not just for disabled people but for seniors and people with small children.

One example is the exhibit at Alcatraz, the infamous prison in California.  No longer do folks have to climb the many steps to see the cells, there is a large screen projection that allows them to “see” inside as if they were up with the rest of the tourists.

Wendy taught me the ultimate value of courage.