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Celebrating Our 60 Year History!By Terry Moakley When the sun rises on the morning of Monday, May 22, this year, United Spinal Association will begin to commemorate 60 years of service to Americans with spinal cord disabilities. I marvel at how much old-fashioned hard work officers, Board of Directors members, and staff have given to this association to make it successful. We cannot write about every one of these folks, but in describing the efforts of some, we pay tribute to all.
A Time of Giants It is the spring of 1946. World War II is over and some paralyzed veterans in different military/veterans hospitals in the Bronx, Queens, and Staten Island sections of New York City begin to meet to discuss questions like, how do I find a place to live that’s wheelchair-accessible? Will I ever work again? Or, how do I travel around this city in my wheelchair? Eventually, they begin to meet regularly. One of the outstanding founding leaders was Bob Moss (second from left, in photo above), who served simultaneously as executive director of our association and our national organization when its first office was in New York City. Bob put publicity and advocacy together to raise awareness of paralyzed veterans’ need for accessible housing, and this strategy worked perfectly. For parts of five decades, Bob Moss continued as a Board of Directors member in service to his comrades. But, Bob Moss had a great supporting team of paralyzed veterans, too. Harold Peterson, for instance, was the housing chairman of the Staten Island contingent, and it’s clear from that era’s meeting minutes that he worked in tandem with Moss on the federal law to require wheelchair-accessible housing benefits for vets. Among the Bronx pioneers were men like Alex Mihalczyk and Walt Suchanoff. When the three New York area groups banded together in 1947 to form the Eastern Paralyzed Veterans Association, Mihalczyk was elected its first president, and Suchanoff developed not one but two chapters of paralyzed vets. When he relocated to Florida, he was a founding member of a similar group in the Ft. Lauderdale area. Moss, Peterson, Mihalczyk, and Suchanoff were among representatives of paraplegic veterans from Chicago, Memphis, Richmond, and Van Nuys, California who journeyed to the Windy City in February of 1947 to form the PVAA—Paralyzed Veterans Associations of America—an event that actually pre-dated the incorporation of Eastern Paralyzed Veterans Association. It wasn’t spinal cord injured veterans alone who formed our organization. It took a great deal of help from people like Fred Levinthal, the attorney who drafted our incorporation papers and who generously hosted luncheon meetings and obtained donated tickets for vets to various social events, and our beloved sports volunteer of 60 years, Al Youakim, who by visiting his paralyzed brother and founding member, Pete, at the St. Albans Naval Hospital and organizing basketball games, began an unmatched lifetime of achievement in coaching wheelchair athletics. Seeds of Growth We continued to be a small yet vocal organization into the fifties, but a 1955 decision by then-President Dr. Morris McGee, a Korean War veteran, changed us significantly. McGee signed a contract for services with a Nashua, New Hampshire, direct-mail fundraising company. This arrangement generated annual income that funded member services. Today, direct-mail premium fundraising remains our main source of donations.
People who helped us grow in the fifties and sixties included Harry A. Schweikert Jr. (second from right in photo above), another charter member who served in multiple positions, such as our third president and in the late fifties, as our executive director. Harry helped to set up the first national PVA office in Washington, DC, and served that agency at different times as president and executive director. Harry was a man who literally wore many hats, and he wore them well. Robert Classon served as our president from 1958 to 1961, toiled as our chief executive for five years in the sixties, and managed to keep in good enough physical condition to be chosen to several U.S. Paralympic teams. When I joined this venerable association in 1967, it was founding member Doug Willis who signed me up. Doug was a legend then for his prowess in building our membership. The very next year, I was appointed to the Board of Directors by our then-President Carlos Rodriguez (right in photo below), truly another legend in our association. Carlos also served at the same time as PVA Vice-President and continued on to become its president. Along with James J. Peters (left in photo below), our accomplished Executive Director from 1971 through 2002, Carlos helped to convince Life magazine in May 1970 to print an exposé about the horrible conditions for Vietnam SCI vets at the old Bronx VA hospital. This national magazine article put us on the map, resulted in the construction of a new Bronx veterans hospital, and convinced the VA to establish a separate SCI Service within its health care system. Carlos went on to head up our Benefits Service program for more than 25 years, and he provided service on the commission for the construction of the Korean War Veterans Memorial in Washington, DC, a project he is considerably proud to be a part of.
As Carlos helped to build and strengthen our Benefits Service program for our members, a gentleman named Joe Mandella, also a founding member, laid the groundwork for our public accessibility advocacy. As a young Board of Directors member, I recall Joe’s verbal reports, delivered in “alphabet speak,” about his meetings with the MTA, the UDC, or the MOPH. After awhile, we all learned which abbreviations went with what agencies. Joe was a pioneer who worked on the federal Architectural Barriers Act of 1968 and on similar laws in New York State and city, and he inspired my lifelong passion for improving access for all disabled persons. The Peters Era And then there was Jim Peters, who engineered in the seventies and eighties the largest growth period this association has known. It is very difficult to single out just one of Jim’s many achievements as the jewel in his crown. My choice is his overall body of work to advance health care services for people with all spinal disorders—veterans and nonveterans, Americans and inhabitants of the entire planet. He would stop on a dime whatever he was doing to help out a newly injured person or a member of our group—no matter to Jim—if the individual needed our assistance. Jim is best remembered within the VA system, but he fully understood that having his staff work on accessibility issues, neuroscience research, and non-VA health care services—to name a few—helped all peoples with spinal cord disabilities. He simply was a great leader. Great leaders have a supporting cast, too, as did Jim Peters. When Jim was appointed Executive Director in 1971, he promptly hired Gerard M. Kelly (right, in photo below) as his deputy. Most new United Spinal members know Jerry as our current chief executive, but for 31 years, he was Jim Peters’ right hand man. So, during our tremendous growth years, he shared in formulating major decisions like our choice to manage our fundraising program ourselves in 1973, litigation versus New York City Transit in 1979 to achieve access to its rail and bus systems, and creation of an SCI/MS cure research facility in 1987 in collaboration with the Yale University School of Medicine. There were many other “cast” members who enabled us to grow by leaps and bounds in the last quarter of the twentieth century. Kurt Eisenmann was our first salaried Research Director. He improved our outreach and services to members with MS, and he helped us to begin to offer continuing education programs for SCI health professionals. Both before and after his employment here, Kurt served on our Board of Directors. Angelo Nicosia, both a participant in, and ambassador for, wheelchair sports, served as our president in the seventies and then became our first director of Hospital Services. Ed Rowan, like Angelo both a past-president and wheelchair sports coordinator for our organization, worked from the mid-eighties to 2002 at the helm of our wheelchair repair service, now known as Wheelchair Medic. Ed continues to serve on our Board of Directors. During the eighties in particular, many former and current Directors and staff worked toward the adoption of critical new federal laws including the Air Carrier Access Act of 1986, the Fair Housing Amendments Act of 1988, and the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990. I remember the day in the eighties when Angelo Nicosia, Ed Rowan and I were joined at the Pan Am Terminal at JFK Airport by internationally-acclaimed violinist Itzahk Perlman as we tested on-board wheelchair prototypes designed to enable mobility impaired travelers to reach a restroom during long flights. A few years later, this device was required on long distance flights by the ACAA. And, the language of local accessible housing and transportation laws and codes we worked on became part of the FHAA and the ADA.
Turn of the Century Looking back at the last decade of the twentieth century, our organization worked diligently to improve our services for our veteran members and to educate Americans with disabilities about the above laws. We began to play a much more active role advocating for increases in the annual VA health care budget in the Northeastern states. We expanded our ability to represent our veteran members in appeals of VA benefit claims which are denied. We held workshops and conferences to educate both persons with disabilities and public and private entities about the ADA and other laws. We wrote and printed manuals and pamphlets about these laws and other veteran and disability matters. Presiding over the delivery of this varied array of programs and services was Joe Segarra (center, in photo above), who served as president of this association for an amazing 16 straight years. Joe always remembered to place our members’ concerns first: he made it a point to visit with our hospitalized members in the three New York City-area VA Spinal Cord Injury Centers every single week. He knew that SCI secondary conditions often led to long periods of hospitalization, and he wanted our members to know that this association was there working for them. Clearly, the watershed event for United Spinal Association in the 21st century is found in our name. In 2003, we ended our 57 year relationship with the PVA, changed our name, switched from a local to a national organization, and perhaps most importantly, opened our membership to all Americans of any age with spinal cord disorders. On the same day in January 2004 that we officially started out on our own, we enjoyed our first achievement—certification by the Department of Veterans Affairs as a national veterans service organization—giving us the ability to continue to represent our veteran members in benefits claims and appeals before the VA. On that day also, at a ceremony at our headquarters, we welcomed our initial five new non-veteran members, and we are pleased to note that on our 60th anniversary, we are the fastest-growing association for people with spinal cord disorders in the United States. And what of recent accomplishments? United Spinal Association continues to reap the rewards of its hard work, and to improve services for our members. In 2004, for example, we toiled to get a law passed to rename the Bronx VAMC the “James J. Peters VAMC” after our beloved fallen Executive Director of 31 years. Last year, we advocated successfully in the Congress a new law to provide traumatic injury insurance for seriously injured soldiers of the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, and we launched our Able To Travel service, a member benefit that provides full-service travel arrangements for our wheelchair-using members. We have also added automotive and adaptive equipment grants for members with qualifying incomes. In the years ahead, United Spinal Association will strive to reach and to serve individuals with spinal cord disorders throughout our country so that they might enjoy lives of fulfillment and well-being. Terry Moakley, associate executive director of Public Affairs, has served United Spinal Association for more than 30 years in various capacities, including advocate, spokesperson and president. He is United Spinal’s unofficial historian. |
