[PHOTO/CAPTION: Justin Dart, August 29, 1930, to June 21, 2002, is pictured

here with President Bill Clinton as he received th

[PHOTO/CAPTION: Justin Dart, August 29, 1930, to June 21, 2002, is pictured

here with President Bill Clinton as he received th

The Braille Monitor

July,

2002

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Justin

Dart Dies

From

the Editor: As we were going to press, we received word of the death of Justin

Dart, a warrior of great stature in the battle for civil rights for disabled

people everywhere. He was a longtime friend and colleague to the Federation.

At our golden anniversary convention in 1990 he presented the Presidential Service

Award to Dr. Jernigan on behalf of President George H. Bush.

The

last time I spoke with Mr. Dart was the day following the death of Dr. Jernigan.

He was calling from his own hospital bed to express his personal sadness at

our loss. His voice was weak, but his spirit was as strong as ever, and his

concern for Mrs. Jernigan and Dr. Maurer personally as well as for the organization

as a whole was deeply touching. The following obituary was widely circulated

immediately following Mr. Dart's death. We join the disabled community around

the world in extending heart-felt sympathy to Justin Dart's family and friends.

Justin

Dart, An Obituary

by

Fred Fay and Fred Pelka

written

at Justin Dart's request

Justin

Dart, August 29, 1930, to June 21, 2002, is pictured here with President

Bill Clinton as he received the National Medal of Freedom in 1998.

Justin

Dart, Jr., a leader of the international disability rights movement and a renowned

human rights activist, died last night at his home in Washington D.C. Widely

recognized as the father of the Americans with Disabilities Act and the godfather

of the disability rights movement, Dart had for the past several years struggled

with the complications of post‑polio syndrome and congestive heart failure.

He was seventy‑one years old. He is survived by his wife Yoshiko, their

extended family of foster children, his many friends and colleagues, and millions

of disability- and human-rights activists all over the world. Dart

was a leader in the disability-rights movement for three decades and an advocate

for the rights of women, people of color, and gays and lesbians. The recipient

of five presidential appointments and numerous honors, including the Hubert

Humphrey Award of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, Dart was on the

podium on the White House lawn when President George H. Bush signed the ADA

into law in July 1990. Dart was also a highly successful entrepreneur, using

his personal wealth to further his human-rights agenda by generously contributing

to organizations, candidates, and individuals, becoming what he called "a

little PAC for empowerment."

In 1998 Dart received the Presidential

Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian award. "Justin Dart,"

said President Clinton in 1996, "in his own way has the most Olympian spirit

I believe I have ever come across."

Until the end Dart remained dedicated

to his vision of a "revolution of empowerment." This would be, he

said, "a revolution that confronts and eliminates obsolete thoughts and

systems, that focuses the full power of science and free‑enterprise democracy

on the systematic empowerment of every person to live his or her God‑given

potential." Dart never hesitated to emphasize the assistance he received

from those working with him, most especially his wife of more than thirty years,

Yoshiko Saji. "She is," he often said, "quite simply the most

magnificent human being I have ever met."

Time and again Dart stressed that

his achievements were possible only with the help of hundreds of activists,

colleagues, and friends. "There is nothing I have achieved, and no addiction

I have overcome, without the love and support of specific individuals who reached

out to empower me . . . There is nothing I have accomplished without reaching

out to empower others." Dart protested the fact that he and only three

other disability activists were on the podium when President Bush signed the

ADA, believing that "hundreds of others should have been there as well."

After receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom, Dart sent out replicas of

the award to hundreds of disability rights activists across the country, writing

that "this award belongs to you."

Justin Dart, Jr., was born on August

29, 1930, into a wealthy and prominent family. His grandfather was the founder

of the Walgreen Drugstore chain, his father a successful business executive,

his mother a matron of the American avant garde. Dart would later describe how

he became "a super loser" as a way of establishing his own identity

in this family of "super winners." He attended seven high schools,

not graduating from any of them, and broke Humphrey Bogart's all‑time

record for the number of demerits earned by a student at elite Andover prep.

"People didn't like me. I didn't like myself."

Dart contracted polio in 1948. With

doctors saying he had less than three days to live, he was admitted into the

Seventh Day Adventist Medical University in Los Angeles. "For the first

time in my life I was surrounded by people who were openly expressing love for

each other and for me, even though I was hostile to them. And so I started smiling

at people and saying nice things to them. And they responded, treating me even

better. It felt so good!" Three days turned into forty years, but Dart

never forgot this lesson. Polio left Dart a wheelchair user, but he never grieved

about this. "I count the good days in my life from the time I got polio.

These beautiful people not only saved my life, they made it worth saving."

Another turning point was Dart's discovery

in 1949 of the philosophy of Mohandas K. Gandhi. Dart defined Gandhi's message

as "Find your own truth, and then live it." This theme too would stay

with him for the rest of his life. Dart attended the University of Houston from

1951 to 1954, earning his bachelor's and master's degrees in political science

and history. He wanted to be a teacher, but the university withheld his teaching

certificate because he was a wheelchair user. During his time in college Dart

organized his first human rights group--a pro‑integration student group

at what was then a whites‑only institution.

Dart went into business in 1956, building

several successful companies in Mexico and Japan. He started Japan Tupperware

with three employees in 1963, and by 1965 it had expanded to some 25,000. Dart

used his businesses to provide work for women and people with disabilities.

In Japan, for example, he took severely disabled people out of institutions,

gave them paying jobs within his company, and organized some of them into Japan's

first wheelchair basketball team. It was during this time he met his wife, Yoshiko.

The final turning point in Dart's

life came during a visit to Vietnam in 1966, to investigate the status of rehabilitation

in that war‑torn country. Visiting a rehabilitation center for children

with polio, Dart instead found squalid conditions, where disabled children were

left on concrete floors to starve. One child, a young girl dying there before

him, took his hand and looked into his eyes. "That scene," he would

later write, "is burned forever in my soul. For the first time in my life

I understood the reality of evil, and that I was a part of that reality."

The Darts returned to Japan but terminated

their business interests. After a period of meditation in a dilapidated farmhouse,

the two decided to dedicate themselves entirely to the cause of human and disability

rights. They moved to Texas in 1974 and immersed themselves in local disability

activism. From 1980 to 1985 Dart was a member, and then chair, of the Texas

Governor's Committee for Persons with Disabilities. His work in Texas became

a pattern for what was to follow: extensive meetings with the grassroots, followed

by a call for the radical empowerment of people with disabilities, followed

by tireless advocacy until victory was won.

In 1981 President Ronald Reagan appointed

Dart to be the vice‑chair of the National Council on Disability. The Darts

embarked on a nationwide tour, at their own expense, meeting with activists

in every state. Dart and others on the Council drafted a national policy that

called for national civil rights legislation to end the centuries-old discrimination

of people with disabilities--what would eventually become the Americans with

Disabilities Act of 1990.

In 1986 Dart was appointed to head

the Rehabilitation Services Administration, a $3 billion federal agency that

oversees a vast array of programs for disabled people. Dart called for radical

changes and for including people with disabilities in every aspect of designing,

implementing, and monitoring rehabilitation programs. Resisted by the bureaucracy,

Dart dropped a bombshell when he testified at a public hearing before Congress

that the RSA was "a vast, inflexible federal system which, like the society

it represents, still contains a significant portion of individuals who have

not yet overcome obsolete, paternalistic attitudes about disability." Dart

was asked to resign his position, but remained a supporter of both Presidents

Reagan and Bush. In 1989 Dart was appointed chair of the President's Committee

on the Employment of People with Disabilities, shifting its focus from its traditional

stance of urging business to "hire the handicapped" to advocating

for full civil rights for people with disabilities.

Dart is best known for his work in

passing the Americans with Disabilities Act. In 1988 he was appointed, along

with parents' advocate Elizabeth Boggs, to chair the Congressional Task Force

on the Rights and Empowerment of Americans with Disabilities. The Darts again

toured the country at their own expense, visiting every state, Puerto Rico,

Guam, and the District of Columbia, holding public forums attended by more than

30,000 people. Everywhere he went, Dart touted the ADA as "the civil rights

act of the future." Dart also met extensively with members of Congress

and staff, as well as President Bush, Vice President Quayle, and members of

the Cabinet. At one point, seeing Dart at a White House reception, President

Bush introduced him as "the ADA man." The ADA was signed into law

on July 26, 1990, an anniversary that is celebrated each year by disability

pride events all across the country.

While taking pride in passage of the

ADA, Dart was always quick to list all the others who shared in the struggle:

Robert Silverstein and Robert Burgdorf, Patrisha Wright and Tony Coelho, Fred

Fay and Judith Heumann, among many others. And Dart never wavered in his commitment

to disability solidarity, insisting that all people with disabilities be protected

by the law and included in the coalition to pass it--including mentally ill

"psychiatric survivors" and people with HIV/AIDS. Dart called this

his "politics of inclusion," a companion to his "politics of

principle, solidarity, and love."

After passage of the ADA Dart threw

his energy into the fight for universal health care, again campaigning across

the country and often speaking from the same podium as President and Mrs. Clinton.

With the defeat of universal health care, Dart was among the first to identify

the coming backlash against disability rights. He resigned all his positions

to become "a full‑time citizen soldier in the trenches of justice."

With the conservative Republican victory in Congress in 1994, followed by calls

to amend or even repeal the ADA and the Individuals with Disabilities Education

Act (IDEA), Dart and disability rights advocates Becky Ogle and Frederick Fay

founded Justice for All, what Dart called a SWAT team to beat back these attacks.

Again Dart was tireless--traveling, speaking, testifying, holding conference

calls, presiding over meetings, calling the media on its distortions of the

ADA, and flooding the country with American flag stickers that said, "ADA,

IDEA, America Wins." Both laws were saved. Dart again placed the credit

with "the thousands of grassroots patriots" who wrote and e‑mailed

and lobbied. But there can be no doubt that without Dart's leadership the outcome

might have been entirely different.

In 1996, confronted by a Republican

Party calling for "a retreat from Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln democracy,"

Dart campaigned for the re‑election of President Clinton. This was a personally

difficult "decision of conscience." Dart had been a Republican for

most of his life and had organized the disability constituency campaigns of

both Ronald Reagan and George Bush, campaigning against Clinton in 1992. But

in a turnabout that was reported in the New York Times and the Washington

Post, Dart went all out for Clinton, even speaking at the Democratic National

Convention in Chicago. The Darts yet again undertook a whirlwind tour of the

country, telling people to "get into politics as if your life depended

on it. It does." At his speech the day after the election, President Clinton

publicly thanked Dart for personally campaigning in all fifty states and cited

his efforts as "one reason we won some of those states."

Dart suffered a series of heart attacks

in late 1997, which curtailed his ability to travel. He continued, however,

to lobby for the rights of people with disabilities and attended numerous events,

rallies, demonstrations, and public hearings. Toward the end of his life Dart

was hard at work on a political manifesto that would outline his vision of "the

revolution of empowerment." In its conclusion he urged his "Beloved

colleagues in struggle, listen to the heart of this old soldier. Our lives,

our children's lives, the quality of the lives of billions in future generations

hangs in the balance. I cry out to you from the depths of my being. Humanity

needs you! Lead! Lead! Lead the revolution of empowerment!"

Today

disabled people across the country and around the world will grieve at the passing

of Justin Dart, Jr. But we will celebrate his love and his commitment to justice.

Please join us in expressing our condolences to Yoshiko and her family during

this difficult time. Keep in mind, however, that it was Justin's wish that any

service or commemoration be used by activists to celebrate our movement and

as an opportunity to recommit ourselves to "the revolution of empowerment."

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