Disability Access News

POSTED: 5:47 pm EDT March 13, 2008
UPDATED: 6:01 pm EDT March 13, 2008

NORCROSS, Ga. -- The morning commute to work became a bit more complicated Monday for a Gwinnett County woman.

Rhonda Wilson, who has cerebral palsy, was riding her motorized wheelchair to work when a police officer pulled her over and gave her a ticket for driving with an expired license.

“This is my wheelchair. This is my legs,” Wilson said.

Wilson uses the chair to travel the mile from her house to the dental office where she works.

“It’s crazy. This is a wheelchair. It gets me from point A to point B,” Wilson said.

Gwinnett police said for the past two years they've received complaints about Wilson as she tools down the street. There are no sidewalks and officers said her wheelchair impedes the flow of traffic

Wilson insists the ticket is not valid because she's not driving a car or a moped. “I want to be a productive member of society,” Wilson said.

Wilson said Thursday that she will not pay the ticket. But she will begin paying for city transit to pick her up.

by Heather L. VanDyke | The Muskegon Chronicle
Thursday March 13, 2008, 10:06 AM

Some people see Kathy LeMieux's wheelchair and think it is a means of transportation, a way of getting where her legs cannot take her.

But to LeMieux, it is a platform.

Her wheelchair is a launching point from which to speak — and inspire.

As the newly-crowned Ms. Wheelchair Michigan 2008, LeMieux will spend the next year "speaking out, speaking up and speaking to" others as a public advocate for people with disabilities.

She will start with her own story.

LeMieux, 37, works as the administrative assistant for the MOKA Foundation, which raises funds to support the work of MOKA, an agency that provides support and services to more than 650 individuals with disabilities in Muskegon, Ottawa, Kent and Allegan counties.

"It couldn't be a better fit," she says. "They pay me to fulfill my beliefs and my mission which is to include me ... include us ... in everything."

LeMieux, who lives in Fruitport with her husband, David, and her service dog, Sugar, has been in a wheelchair almost since birth. She was diagnosed with muscular dystrophy, a genetic hereditary muscle disease that causes progressive muscle weakness as an infant.

Her mother has only one photograph of LeMieux standing.

The rest of the pictures — through her school days in Rockford to her graduation from Ferris State University in Big Rapids to her wedding to David LeMieux in 2005 in Muskegon — are all in a wheelchair.

Even the pictures of her hiking, riding horses, driving a specially equipped van or riding aboard a personal watercraft, show her in a wheelchair.

"I don't know if you can understand this," she says, "but I really forget that I'm in a chair. I've always been in one."

Yet the realities of her life are unavoidable.

LeMieux's mobility is so limited by her muscular dystrophy, she cannot do something as simple as reach across the desk to retrieve a tissue when she is spontaneously overcome with emotion.

Ask her what it means to be named Ms. Wheelchair Michigan which automatically enters her in the national contest in July, and she doesn't talk of barriers or restrictions. She believes her crown and a sash are invitations to conversations, the start of questions that lead to issues of advocacy and inclusion.

As she speaks, her tears flow unchecked, rolling down her cheek. She can neither brush them away or reach for a tissue.

"I'm not going to be a mother. I'm not going to live to be old. This is a way to leave something of myself," she says.

A woman whose words usually trip over each other because she speaks so quickly, LeMieux suddenly is silent.

"I have to take this opportunity," she finally whispers. "I have to seize it."

Muscular dystrophy runs in her family.

LeMieux is one of six daughters, three of whom were diagnosed with muscular dystrophy, all of whom were raised with an intense streak of independence. Though it is hereditary, neither parent had the disease.

"I come from a family of strong-willed women. My oldest sister who had muscular dystrophy taught me to be a firecracker," she says. "Believe me, I've enjoyed life."
As her friends, family and co-workers well know.

To celebrate her new title as Ms. Wheelchair Michigan, one of LeMieux's friends posted the motto: "Live well. Love much. Laugh often." on the wall of her office as a daily reminder of her zest for life and almost-limitless energy.

"Sometimes I think God put me in this chair to slow me down," she says.

But over the past three years, LeMieux's disease has progressed more rapidly than either doctors or she anticipated.

"I've had to learn to accept: This is what I can do. This is what I want to do. This is what my body will let me do," she says. "I want to do everything, but my body can't keep up."

LeMieux's mobility is extremely restricted by her form of muscular dystrophy, which is Spinal Muscular Atrophy Type 3. She is only able to move a few fingers on each hand, enough to type, operate her wheelchair and drive her van. But she can no longer transfer in and out of her wheelchair by herself. She cannot fix her own hair, bathe, dress herself or attend to her toilet needs.

"I can't lift a gallon of milk," she says, trying to put things in perspective for those who cannot understand the realities of her life. "I'm about as strong as a baby."

She has scoliosis of the spine and limited lung capacity because of the muscular dystrophy. Bronchitis and pneumonia are "my worst enemy," she says, and both have hospitalized her for extended recuperation.

But she does not face either the challenges -- or joys -- of life alone.

Not only is LeMieux a MOKA employee, she also employs the services of an aide through the agency who helps her dress, get ready for work and do housework.

And then there's Sugar, LeMieux's Paws for a Cause service dog. Sugar is so skilled, he can open doors, push elevator buttons and pick up whatever LeMieux drops -- whether it's her car keys, a credit card, a two-litre pop bottle or even a dime. A Labrador-retriever mix, Sugar is LeMieux's second service dog.

"He is part of me all day every day," she says.

But what makes life so special is her husband.

"I really believe he's been sent to me," she says.

This is her second marriage. Her first was "turbulent," she says, adding only that it lasted 10 years. About five years ago, LeMieux was going through a great personal transformation. She had majored in business management at Ferris State University, drawn to the high-powered world of corporations and business.

"I don't know if this makes any sense," she says, "but I love the sound of a businesswoman walking down the hall ... the sound of her shoes hitting the floor."
It is a poignant image from someone who will never walk.

"On the other hand, I'll never wear out my shoes," she says, turning everything into a positive.

As much as she loved the corporate world, the doctor warned her that she had to slow down "if I wanted to live past 30," so she went searching for a job in the nonprofit sector. At the same time, she had a spiritual conversion.

And of all things, at some fundraiser somewhere, she won a free membership to a matchmaker service. One of the people with whom she was paired was David LeMieux of Fruitport, a maintenance technician at an apartment complex in Norton Shores. They talked on the telephone several times. Before meeting in person, Kathy LeMieux decided it was time to "divulge" that she was in a wheelchair.

That's when he told her that he had a mild case of cerebral palsy.

In 2005, they were married. He modified their home to accommodate her wheelchair and welcome her service dog. He keeps her 1995 van running, despite its 130,000 miles and finicky technology. Most important, he brings to life her motto of "Live well. Love much. Laugh often."

"We are so madly in love," she says.

For LeMieux, even this part of the story is an opportunity to spread the gospel of inclusion and advocacy.

Every experience is the chance to teach people what it means to be disabled; that women in wheelchairs can be in love and married; that women with a debilitating disease can hold jobs and give back to the community.

"She'll be an eloquent spokesperson and an incredible advocate," says her boss, Thomas Zmolek, who is CEO of both MOKA and its supporting foundation. The agency sponsored LeMieux's entry in the Ms. Wheelchair Michigan pageant.

Zmolek was unable to provide the number of how many people with disabilities are MOKA employees, although he reported that 1,200 individuals with disabilities have been placed in the community with local employers since 1988.

"I want to teach people to ask questions about those of us with disabilities," LeMieux says. "That's how I want to spend the next year. I feel like my opportunities are limitless."

13 March 2008 15:30

The government's much heralded welfare reforms could damage disabled people's chances of finding work, leading campaigners have warned.

The British Association for Supported Employment (BASE) has written to work and pensions secretary James Purnell expressing fears that welfare-to-work firms will be discouraged from finding jobs for disabled people by the reforms announced last month.

Under the new commissioning structure, private and voluntary sector specialists will be able to bid for about £1bn-worth of five-year state contracts to find work for the long-term unemployed.

BASE chairman Huw Davies believes this will see firms focus all their energy on the easiest-to-help people to keep costs down - leaving those with more intensive needs out in the cold.

"Companies will want to make profit, they will cherry-pick the easiest individuals, and we think that will drive specialist providers out of business," he told Personnel Today.

The recent demise of welfare-to-work providers Carter & Carter and Instant Muscle showed just how tight the margins are in this field, said Davies.

"If they are both going into administration, it says something about the risks they are taking in tendering at low profit margins," he said. "The competition means organisations will not resource the services that are needed to help disabled people move into employment."

Davies has asked Purnell to meet with him as a matter of urgency to discuss these concerns. He has also called on employers to complain.

"Employers will lose out under this system," he said. "There is a business case for employing people from a diverse background and people with an understanding of disabilities."

A Department for Work and Pensions spokesman rejected claims that disabled people would be sidelined, adding that the commissioning strategy would reward organisations from all sectors that were best placed to provide work for the long-term unemployed.

By Barbara De Lollis, USA TODAY
Ellen Brehm, a retired nurse who walks with cane, was stranded last September after flying home from California following the annual trip she's been taking with college friends since 1947.

Her flight, had which departed six hours late, landed at Newark at about 1:20 a.m. The wheelchair service she'd requested was nowhere in sight. Brehm returned to the plane to sit and wait, but a flight attendant told her she must get off so the crew could leave.

She then stood on the jet bridge, balancing on her cane, to wait. About 30 minutes later, another flight attendant exited the plane and asked if she needed help. The woman eventually returned with a wheelchair attendant.

"Here I am, at 2 a.m., 83 years old, all by myself," Brehm says. "There wasn't one person in this whole huge airport. I don't know what I would have done if she hadn't come out."

Airlines are obligated to provide free, prompt wheelchair assistance between curbside and cabin seat to comply with the 21-year-old Air Carrier Access Act, an anti-discrimination law.