Fighting For Yes! by Maryann Cocca-Lefler

When Judy Heumann was a little girl, life in a wheelchair meant not being able to do many things. When she was five-years-old her mother attempted to sign her up for kindergarten but the principal refused, saying that Judy was a fire hazard. They then decided to try enrolling her at the Jewish School. The principal told Judy's parents if she learned Hebrew she could attend in September. Despite taking Hebrew classes in the summer, Judy was refused admittance in the fall. 

Judy spent years studying at home with a teacher who would come to their home. However, Judy loved to learn and the teacher was only able to come a few hours each week. In the afternoons, Judy played with her friends in their neighbourhood. They would tell her all about their day at school, going to the gym, the library and music classes. Judy's mother signed her up for activities after school but getting into the buildings for them was difficult. It meant taking her wheelchair up stairs and over bumpy curbs.

When Judy was nine-years-old she was accepted to the Health Conservation 21 class at Public School 219. However, she soon discovered that her class, held in the basement,  was made up of only eight students, all of whom were disabled. Regular students attended class in classrooms upstairs.

As Judy and her friends were growing up, they were able to go to many places she was not, such as restaurants, public transit or the library. Most buildings had entrances with stairs, and there were no ramps. One place Judy loved was Camp Oakhurst, a summer camp for children with disabilities. There she had the freedom to do many things and she felt included.

When she was fourteen-years-old, Judy attended high school, the first student from her Health Conservation 21 class to do so. Despite having few friends and feeling left out, Judy worked hard and graduated. The principal didn't want Judy to be on stage with the other students, but her father insisted. She was placed at the back, where her wheelchair was hidden. Judy had won a leadership award, but it was given to her at the back of the stage where she couldn't be seen.

Judy attended college, became a teacher and became active in politics after she met other people with disabilities. However, when it came time to obtain her teacher certification, Judy was told she was a danger to students!  Judy had had enough and she decided to sue the New York City Board of Education. She had taken all the required courses and was qualified. This was during the 1960's when the civil rights movement was taking place and Judy's struggle was also seen as an important one. Her suit was to be the beginning of serious challenges that would obtain the right of people with disabilities to participate fully in society and in the workplace.

Discussion

Fighting For Yes chronicles the fight for equality for people with disabilities from the perspective of Judy Heumann. Born in 1947, Judith Ellen Heumann had polio when she was eighteen months old, spending three months in an iron lung. For the next three years she was repeatedly hospitalized. Her parents refused to consider placing her in an institution, as the doctors suggested.

Judith had a strong desire to learn and had to fight to be included in the education system in the United States. As mentioned in Fighting for Yes, when she was not allowed to enroll in the public school just down the street from her home, she was given a teacher from the Board of Education for a total of two and a half hours a week! The only way Judith was able to attend high school was due to the efforts of her parents and other parents of children with disabilities, demanding the Board of Education make some of the high schools in New York City wheelchair accessible, which they did. 

Judith was able to attend university, obtaining her Bachelor's degree in 1969. When she applied to obtain her teaching license, Judith passed the oral and written exams but failed the physical exam because she had had polio. The Board of Education was afraid she would not be able to lead her students to safety in the case of a fire. So her license was denied. When her situation became public through an article and editorial in the New York Times, she received both public and legal support.  After this, Judith decided to sue the New York City Board of Education. She won the case which was heard by the first African- American woman judge, who as Judith described in her Ted Talk, "knew discrimination when she saw it." Judith was hired as a teacher and taught elementary school for three years. In 1975, she received her Masters in Public Health from the University of California at Berkley. 

In 1977,Joseph Califano, the U.S. Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare refused to sign the regulations that were needed to make Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 into law. Section 504 prohibited any entity from receiving public funding if they discriminated against persons with disabilities. Both the Nixon and Ford administrations refused to move ahead with the legislation because of the potential costs to hospitals and government buildings. So Judith, along with many others organized sit-ins across the United States. Califano signed the regulations and 504 became law. 

As the disability rights movement grew there were more protections added: the Americans with Disabilities Act was passed in 1990. Judith was named Assistant Secretary of the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitation Services from 1993 to 2001. Among other positions she has held, she was appointed by President Obama as Special Advisor on International Disability Rights in 2010, and has been a Senior Fellow at the Ford Foundation from 2017 to 2019.  

In Fighting For Yes, Judith Heumann demonstrates how one person can make a significant difference, by having the courage to fight for what they believe in. Fear and lack of understanding about disabilities resulted in discrimination that removed the most basic of rights such as attending school, and being able to access basic amenities like libraries, theatres and government buildings. Judith wasn't willing to accept this and became a tireless disabilities rights activist. Fighting For Yes focuses on her determination to get several important pieces of legislation passed, including Section 504. Despite all that she has achieved, Judith knows that there is still much work to be done to make life easier and more accessible for those with disabilities. 

Illustrator Vivien Mildenberger has portrayed Judith's story using gauche and digital media. The back matter contains a Note From Judith Heumann, an Author's Note and an offering of Selected Sources.

 

Judith's TED talk, given in 2016 is highly recommended. Her website is Judith Heumann.

Book Details:

Fighting For Yes! The Story of Disability Rights Activist Judith Heummann by Maryann Cocca-Lefler
New York: Abrams Books For Young Readers         2022

Dorothea's Eyes by Barb Rosenstock

Dorothea Lange was an American documentary photographer, famous for her Depression-era photographs of migrant and displaced farmers.Dorothea was born in May 1895 in Hoboken, New Jersey to Heinrich Nutzhorn and Johanna Lange. She had a brother, Martin. When she was seven years old, Dorothea contracted poliomyelitis which damaged her right leg, leaving it weakened and shorter. This disability was to affect her profoundly for the rest of her life. It also made Dorothea more empathetic to the suffering of others.

Dorothea's father abandoned the family when she was twelve. Later on Dorothea dropped her father's surname of Nutzhorn and adopted her mother's surname of Lange.

She graduated from Wadleigh High School For Girls. In 1913, Dorothea began attending the New York Training School For Teachers but she was more interested in becoming a photographer. So she studied photography at Columbia University and undertook apprenticeships at several New York Studios. In 1917, Dorothea was able to take a class with Charles White at Columbia.

In January 1918, Dorothea and a friend, Florence Ahlstrom decided to undertake a trip around the world. Their journey which began by train, ended quickly in San Francisco when their money was stolen. Dorothea settled in San Francisco, working in a photography studio, meeting other members of the art community in the city and eventually opening up her own portrait studio. In 1920, she married Maynard Dixon, the renowned western painter.

With the onset of the Great Depression and the soup kitchens, employments lines and migrant workers, Dorothea changed her focus from portraiture to the people suffering from the economic crisis. Her photograph of a man looking away from a crowd in a soup kitchen captured the attention of the Federal Government and she was hired by the Farm Security Administration to document the situation of migrant workers, destitute farm families and sharecroppers. It was her picture titled Migrant Mother as well as many others of this era that launched her career as a photographer.

Discussion
Dorothea's Eyes captures Dorothea's story from her point of view focusing on her remarkable ability to see what others miss. Rosenstock suggests this ability was the result of Dorothea's illness as a child which left her with a damaged leg and made her want to hide. She preferred to be invisible, offering her the opportunity to view life in a way not possible for most people. She felt she really "saw" the world as it is.

Migrant Mother by Dorothea Lange

Rosenstock describes Dorothea as watchful, curious describing this ability as seeing with her eyes and her heart. As a person who was ignored in her childhood because of her disability, Dorothea felt a strong empathy for the poor of the Depression Era, people whose struggles were being ignored by society. Her photographs opened the eyes of Americans to the suffering of the poor, the misplaced farmers and the unemployed. Dorothea's photographs humanized these people. In some cases, her photographs helped bring relief in the form of food to people who were starving. Although Rosenstock doesn't mention this in her picture book story, Dorothea went on to capture the internment of Japanese Americans in special camps, a practice that was undertaken during World War II simply because of their Asian heritage. Her photographs were confiscated by the American Army and were not seen for decades, even by Dorothea herself.

Accompanying Rosenstock's text are the illustrations by award-winning illustrator, Gerard Dubois, who created them using acrylic on paper and as well as digitally. The author includes a time line of Dorothea Lange's life, some of her remarkable photographs, a short note about her, a Selected Bibliography, Sources for Quotations and suggestions For Further Reading.

You can read more about the story of the Migrant Mother here.

Book Details:

Dorothea's Eyes by Barb Rosenstock
Honesdale, Pennsylvania: Calkins Creek         2016

image credit: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/roadshow/stories/articles/2014/4/14/migrant-mother-dorothea-lange/

DVD: Breathe

Breathe portrays the remarkable story of Robin Cavendish who contracted poliomyelitis in 1958 at the age of twenty-eight years old. As a result of this illness he was paralyzed from the neck down and completely reliant upon a respirator to breathe. Initially Robin wanted to die but with the support of his wife, Diana he was able to live a very full life and change the way severely disabled people were treated.

The movie opens with Robin Cavendish first noticing the beautiful Diana Blacker while playing cricket. His friends tell him he hasn't a chance with her as she is a notorious heartbreaker. But after he bats a ball into the china on a table near Diana, her interest in him is piqued. They date, fall in love and marry in 1957, despite her twin brothers Blogg and David expressing concern about the impending marriage. Marrying Robin will mean having to travel and live in Kenya, however Diana is quite agreeable to this.

The film then jumps to Kenya where the Cavendishs are with friends, Colin, Mary and Don who is a doctor. Robin mentions how much he loves the silence in Kenya. At a camp fire one evening, Don tells a story about sixty prisoners on Kome Island during the Mau Mau rebellion. Crammed into a small tin hut and with no possibility of being freed, the leader of the prisoners gives them permission to die. The next morning they are all found dead; Don's point being that people can will themselves to live or die. While Robin doesn't really believe the story, Diana emphatically states that she would choose to live. This scene is a foreshadowing of the coming trial Robin will face when he becomes seriously ill and must make the choice to live or die.

Shortly after this Diana reveals to Robin that she is expecting a baby and he is thrilled. The movie then jumps to the British Embassy in Nairobi in 1959. During a tennis match, Robin feels unwell and uncharacteristically loses to Colin. That night Robin becomes ill, shivering with fever and with terribly aching joints. He staggers to his friend's room and collapses. It would be the last time Robin would ever walk. He is rushed to hospital and when asked to move his arms or legs he can do neither. Soon he is struggling to breathe and is placed on a respirator. The diagnosis of polio is made with complete paralysis from the neck down. Diana is told Robin has a matter of months at most to live. When their baby, Jonathan is born, Diana places him next to Robin.

In 1960, Robin is flown home to England where he is placed in a hospital with other patients. Dr. Khan tells Diana that Robin is severely depressed and doesn't want to see her or his son Jonathan. When Blogg and David visit, Robin insists he wants to die. Dr. Entwistle who is in charge of the ward tells Diana that Robin is learning to swallow and if he can accomplish that he can learn to talk again. When he finally is able to speak, Robin challenges Diana as to why she continues to visit him. "You can't love this," he tells her, to which she responds, "Apparently I can."

Robin with his son Jonathan

In response to Robin's wish to die, Diana tells him that since the machine is breathing for him he's going to keep on living; she wants Jonathan to know him. So Robin asks her to get him out of the hospital. But when she approaches Dr. Entwistle, he refuses saying that no one with her husband's level of disability has ever left hospital care. Nevertheless, Diana purchases an old house and with the help of Dr. Khan, her brothers and a nurse, they attempt to sneak him out of the hospital. There efforts are discovered by Dr. Entwistle who orders them back, but Robin staunchly refuses. For Robin, being outside the hospital, seeing the blue sky, being around his family and friends is glorious and his mood improves immediately.

Robin is not satisfied with just being home, so with his friend Teddy Hall, an Oxford professor, they   devise a chair with a battery to power the respirator to give Robin more mobility. The first chair was built in 1962. Mobile around his home leads Robin to want to explore further and in 1965 they are able to retrofit a van so that Robin can sit in the front seat. This leads to trips across England and even into Spain where disaster almost strikes when the van's power which runs Robin's respirator is shorted out.

In the spring of 1971, Dr. Clement Aitken, Director of the Disability Research Foundation is amazed by Teddy Hall's motorized wheel chair and questions how he created it. Aitken tells Hall that he wants him to create hundreds of chairs, something that isn't possible without some kind of funding. Their first attempt at funding is refused so they seek a private donor in the form of a dowager and are able to make ten chairs for two thousand pounds. Dr. Aitken tells Robin and Diana that there are thousands of patients living their entire lives in hospital beds when they could be living a much better life.

With the encouragement of Dr. Aitken, Robin and Diana accompany him to a European conference in Germany in 1973 on Managing the Lives of the Severely Disabled. Dr. Aitken and Robin go to see Dr. Erik Langdorf who has patients in a modern, sterile environment of iron lungs. They are immobile with only their heads visible. He is shocked when he sees Robin in an upright chair with a respirator. At the conference, Dr. Aitken remarks that it is odd that at a conference on the disabled there are none in attendance and brings in Robin who asks them why they keep their disabled hidden away.Robin tells his story and tasks them to go back to their hospitals and help their patients to truly live "open the gates and set them free..."

Eventually the use of the respirator takes its toll on Robin as his lungs suffer abrasions and begin to suffer from bleeds. These bleeds he is told will only get worse and eventually they will kill him; he will drown in his own blood. Robin decides with the help of Teddy that he will euthanize himself. To this end he has a series of parties and makes arrangements to have his respirator turned off. Although Diana is at first angered, she comes to accept his decision. Robin Cavendish passes away

Discussion

Breathe brings to life the extraordinary journey of Robin Cavendish, who after being stricken with the paralytic form of polio faces a shortened life confined to an institution. Instead with the determination and love of his wife, Robin is able to live a fulfilling and rich life the next thirty-six years, In that time he challenges how the medical profession and society as a whole view the severely disabled.

It was Robin and Diana's son John Cavendish, a successful British film producer who believed his father's story would make a good movie. To that end he enlisted William Nicholson who wrote the screenplay for the movies, Gladiators and Nell. Nicholson whose services would be quite costly, asked not to be paid until the film was actually made.

Robin (Andrew Garfield) and Diana (Claire Foy) in Breathe

Cavendish had formed a new studio, Imaginarium Studios which specializes in motion-capture filmmaking, with motion capture actor Andy Serkis. Serkis, probably best known for his work as Gollum in the Lord of the Rings films, was interested in making a movie and this seemed the ideal vehicle. Like Cavendish he too had a vested interest in the movie as his sister has multiple sclerosis and his mother has worked with the disabled.

Cavendish wanted to make sure the film about his father's life was not dark and depressing but uplifting. He wanted to portray the fact that his father's quality of life was good and that he led a life full of joy and adventure, sending the message that the severely disabled could have a life worth living. In this respect, Breathe is very successful. Serkis shows a very depressed Robin who is intent on dying during the period immediately following his illness. However, his wife Diana refuses to allow this but with some help, manages to remove him from the hospital setting. For Robin the choice is clear: he would rather live a fuller life with the risk of dying should his respirator fail than be bedridden in a hospital hidden away from family and friends. Once home his transformation is immediate and Robin is filled with ideas that might make his life better.

Breathe highlights the reality that the severely disabled can have a good quality of life with support from family, health care professionals and society. This is especially evident in the scenes where Robin and Dr. Aitken attend a conference in Germany in the early 1970's. The scene where Robin and Dr. Aitken are shown Dr. Langdorf's progress in treating polio victims is both shocking and heartbreaking. Breathe also serves as a reminder to a generation, which has never known the ravages of "childhood diseases" like polio, measles and whooping cough, just how dangerous these illnesses can be.

Claire Foy gives a captivating performance as Diana Cavendish; Andrew Garfield's job of portraying Robin Cavendish was much more challenging but he captures the range of emotions Robin experienced throughout the early years following his illness. The film has a solid cast of supporting actors as well.

Like The Theory of Everything which portrayed the remarkable life of Stephen Hawkings, Breathe challenges viewers to view the severely disabled differently, to recognize that though their bodies may be broken, inside are minds and hearts with dreams, desires and capabilities. We have a duty to give them the best life possible.

Last Airlift: A Vietnamese Orphan's Rescue from War/ One Step at a Time by Marsha Forchuck Skrypuch

Marsha Skrypuch has written two short books for young readers that tell the story of eight year old Son Thi Anh Tuyet, a Vietnamese orphan who was adopted by a family from Brantford, Ontario. Living in an orphanage in Saigon, in 1975, Tuyet  had been crippled by polio when younger and was suffering from psychological trauma as a result of  her experiences during the Vietnam War.

With the fall of South Vietnam and its capital city, Saigon, to the North Vietnamese communists, the West began to evacuate children and babies from orphanages all over the city. Tuyet was one of fifty-seven babies and children airlifted out of Saigon and flown to Toronto Canada. This flight, on April 13, 1975, was the last to arrive in Canada. The children on this flight were not yet adopted. Last Airlift goes on to describe Tuyet's experience, leaving Vietnam and her new life with John and Dorothy Morris who adopted her into their family. Marsha Skrypuch intended to write Tuyet's story as a novel. Tuyet initially couldn't remember much of her early childhood, but as her memories resurfaced, Ms. Skrypuch decided to tell Tuyet's story instead.

The second book, One Step At A Time, tells about Tuyet's struggle to have her leg, damaged and weakened by polio mended so that she would be able to walk again. Tuyet's surgery took place at the newly opened McMaster University Hospital in Hamilton, ON in 1975. At this time, parents could not stay with their children, and there were no translation services available to a newcomer to Canada,  like Tuyet. Skrypuch effectively captures Tuyet's confusion and fear at being left alone in a hospital for a procedure she didn't understand.
Eventually Tuyet begins to adapt to her new home and family, largely due to having regained the ability to be mobile and also due to the loving care of the Morris family.

Tuyet's early attachment to John Morris is truly endearing. One family picture with Tuyet's arm draped over her father's knee suggests that Tuyet immediately formed a close bond with the man who was the first father she had ever known. Tuyet was very blessed to have been adopted into such a loving family. Her two younger sisters treated her with kindness and repeatedly reassure her. They introduced her to the strange, new customs of her adopted country, Canada.

These two books will serve as a gentle introduction for younger children to an event known as the Fall of Saigon and also the Vietnam War. Skrypuch's books can also be used as the jumping point for children learning about the Vietnamese refugees who came to Canada in the mid-1970's.

Book Details:
Last Airlift. A Vietnamese Orphan's Rescue from War by Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch
One Step at a Time: A Vietnamese Child Finds Her Way
Pajama Press