Fred Fay

Fred Fay was an early leader in the disability rights movement in the United States. He won the 1997 Henry B. Betts Award for outstanding achievement in civil rights for Americans with disabilities. Fay was recognized for "flat-out advocacy" over several decades. He helped lead the nationwide efforts by disability advocates to secure passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990.

Frederick Allan Fay, Ph.D., was born on September 12, 1944, and raised in Washington, DC. At age 16, he sustained a cervical spinal cord injury, and started using a manual wheelchair for mobility. At 17, he launched his disability advocacy career by co-founding "Opening Doors," a counseling and information center.

Fay attended the University of Illinois, one of the nation's first wheelchair-accessible universities. A few years later, he was a founder of the Boston Center for Independent Living, the Massachusetts Coalition of Citizens with Disabilities, and of the American Coalition of Citizens with Disabilities.

Fay worked for many years at the Tufts New England Medical Center, until syringomyelia made it impossible for him to sit upright. For the past quarter century, Fred has worked from his home in Concord, Massachusetts. In the early years, he used a headset to speak and listen on the phone, plus a personal computer mounted on a stand near his motorized bed. Today, he has an electronic workstation suspended over the bed.

It was from there that Fay launched, and continues to support, the Justice for All forum that compiles and distributes disability rights information to his wide network of friends and allies.

One of the continuing visionaries of the disability rights movement, Fay provides ongoing leadership to disability advocates. He is recognized in the movement for his irrepressible enthusiasm and optimism.

As a philosopher, Fred made a short video with another disability rights notable, Roland W. Sykes, founder of DIMENET. Much more video is available but was not edited for showing due to Roland's unexpected illness and death in early 2008.
[Whose Movie Is This? [http://www.mouthmag.com/live/DIMENETShorts00001.wmv] ]

There is also a proposal to make a documentary feature length film about Fred. A clip from the proposal is available on YouTube. [A Life Worth Living [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fOWFm_DV_DY] ]

Interviews with Fred can also be found the UC Berkeley Bancroft Library oral history collections on the Disability Rights and Independent Living Movement [http://bancroft.berkeley.edu/collections/drilm/collection/items/fay_fred.html]

References

*

External links

* [http://www.jfanow.org Justice for All]