The late Eileen Healy was an active Ten Penny Player’s board member, who we often turned to for her articulate opinions and insight. She was one of the first Easter Seal poster children and as an adult became director of New York City’s Easter Seals. A long time and well loved disability rights advocate Eileen mentored Barbara and me, as arts special educators and parents of a student with multiple disabilities. Eileen and Frieda Zames (Mathematician, author and president of Disabled In Action) encouraged us to bring the Waterways Project of Ten Penny Players to Goldwater Memorial Hospital, which was the first public hospital in America devoted solely to the treatment of chronic diseases.
Our colleagues in the disability rights movement were pioneers of the independent living movement. At that time Anne Emerman was the Director of the Mayor’s Office for People with Disabilities (MOPD) and Marilyn Saviola was Director of Center for the Independence of the Disabled in New York (CIDNY). Many years before, they each had been residents at Goldwater Hospital, the largest residential long-term health facility in the New York City. They were aware of the dilemma faced by residents, whose lives in an institution may have dimmed their expectations for achievement in the outside world. Our work was to give voice, enable expression and self advocacy and through publishing to get their words and dreams out of the residence to a greater audience.
Through the public school system’s special education superintendency, Waterways was able to work with hospitalized students, attending the Goldwater learning center. The students published their poetry and prose in magazines of expressive writing. The students who were hospitalized as the result of street violence were encouraged by Mayor Dinkins to give voice to their stories, and to tour city schools as advocates for reducing the level of violence in the communities.
One of the residents, Starry, had been admitted after an automobile accident that left her unable to walk. She was adjusting to the trauma, and preparing to return to the world outside the institution. Through writing and publishing she was able to communicate her concerns. In one of her poems, she wrote:
When the difficult times
Make me sigh,
I try to persevere
head up high
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