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University of California Berkeley Regional Oral History Office University of California The Bancroft Library Berkeley, California Disability Rights and Independent Living Movement Oral History Series Joel Bryan FOUNDER AND DIRECTOR OF DISABLED STUDENTS SERVICES, UC RIVERSIDE AND UC DAVIS An Interview Conducted by Susan O Hara in 1997 and 2000 Copyright C 2000 by The Regents of the University of California Since 1954 the Regional Oral History Office has been interviewing leading participants in or well-placed witnesses to major events in the development of northern California, the West, and the nation. Oral history is a method of collecting historical information through tape-recorded interviews between a narrator with firsthand knowledge of historically significant events and a well- informed interviewer, with the goal of preserving substantive additions to the historical record. The tape recording is transcribed, lightly edited for continuity and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewee. The corrected manuscript is indexed, bound with photographs and illustrative materials, and placed in The Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley, and in other research collections for scholarly use. Because it is primary material, oral history is not intended to present the final, verified, or complete narrative of events. It is a spoken account, offered by the interviewee in response to questioning, and as such it is reflective, partisan, deeply involved, and irreplaceable. ************************************ All uses of this manuscript are covered by a legal agreement between The Regents of the University of California and Joel Bryan dated March 24, 1999. The manuscript is thereby made available for research purposes. All literary rights in the manuscript, including the right to publish, are reserved to The Bancroft Library of the University of California, Berkeley. No part of the manuscript may be quoted for publication without the written permission of the Director of The Bancroft Library of the University of California, Berkeley. Requests for permission to quote for publication should be addressed to the Regional Oral History Office, 486 Bancroft Library, Mail Code 6000, University of California, Berkeley 94720-6000, and should include identification of the specific passages to be quoted, anticipated use of the passages, and identification of the user. The legal agreement with Joel Bryan requires that he be notified of the request and allowed thirty days in which to respond. It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: Joel Bryan, "Founder and Director of Disabled Students Services, UC Riverside and UC Davis," an oral history conducted in 1997 and 2000 by Susan O Hara, Regional Oral History Office, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, 2000. Copy no. Cataloging Information BRYAN, Joel (b. 1937) Disability programs administrator Founder and Director of Disabled Students Services, UC Riverside and UC Davis, 2000, xx, 86 pp. Family background in foreign service; onset of polio in the Philippines, 1950; rehab at Kabat-Kaiser, 1951-1954; independent living skills, India and Pakistan; UC Riverside, B.A., and career: HOPE (Handicapped Opportunity Program for Education) and Special Services; UC Davis, Office of Handicapped Services: accessibility, ACR-201 funding, affirmative action; connections between UC Berkeley, Davis and Riverside access efforts; marriage and family; reflections on independent living skills and post- polio syndrome. Interviewed 1997 and 2000 by Susan O Hara for the Disability Rights and Independent Living Movement Series. The Regional Oral History Office, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley. Joel Bryan, 1980. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The Disability Rights and Independent Living Movement Oral History Series was funded primarily by a three-year field-initiated research grant awarded in 1996 by the National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research (NIDRR) , an agency of the United States Department of Education, Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services. Any of the views expressed in the oral history interviews or accompanying materials are not endorsed by the sponsoring agency. Special thanks are due to other donors to this project over the years: the Prytanean Society; Raymond Lifchez, Judith Stronach, and Dr. Henry Bruyn; and June A. Cheit, whose generous donation in memory of her sister, Rev. Barbara Andrews, allowed the Regional Oral History Office to develop the grant project . TABLE OF CONTENTS --Joel Bryan SERIES INTRODUCTION by Simi Linton i SERIES HISTORY by Ann Lage and Susan O Hara vii SERIES LIST xiv INTERVIEW HISTORY xix BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION xx I EARLY YEARS 1937-1954 1 Family Background and Travels 1 Onset of Polio: the Philippines, 1950 2 Rehabilitation at Rabat-Kaiser, 1951-1954 4 II TEENS AND EARLY TWENTIES 7 Part-time Student at Santa Monica High School 7 In the Driver s Seat- -Developing Independent Living Skills in Bangalore, India 10 LiberationFirst Motorized Wheelchair 13 Orange Coast College 15 Teaching In Karachi, Pakistan 16 III UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT RIVERSIDE 20 Deciding on UC Riverside, 1960 20 Activism for Library Accessibility 22 Engineering to Psychology 22 Jan DeNeau QuartetPlaying the Blues 23 Placement Office Employment 26 IV FAMILY LIFE 28 Marriage and Parenthood 28 Recollections of a Whirlwind Romance 28 V DEVELOPMENT OF DISABLED STUDENTS SERVICES AT UC RIVERSIDE 30 Director of Student Special Services, 1969 30 Program Philosophy: Developing Independent Living Skills 33 Creation of Handicapped Opportunity Program For Education (HOPE) 34 Peerness: UC Riverside/UC Berkeley Connection 40 HOPE Services and Role as a Pioneer 42 Consequences of Being Part of the Establishment 46 Evolution of an Independent Living Movement 48 VI OFFICE OF HANDICAPPED SERVICES (OHS), UC DAVIS, 1973, SERVICES TO HANDICAPPED STUDENTS (SHS) 52 Recruited by Director of Special Services 52 Getting Started: OHS and Students Learning from Each Other, Advocating for Campus Accessibility 56 Project Funding: ACR-201, a Step Backwards in Accountability 59 Accessibility in the Community of Davis 63 Lifelong Friendship with John Hessler 65 Regulations of Section 504, Rehabilitation Act, 1973 66 Affirmative Action Efforts 67 Shifting Population, Larger OHS Staff and Space, by Retirement in 1988 68 Governor s Trophy, 1986 71 VII FURTHER REFLECTIONS 73 Changes over Bryan s Lifetime for People with Disabilities 73 Effects of Post-polio Syndrome 75 Adaptive is Beautiful: Bryan Family Life on Film, 1975 79 Pressing Issues for People with Disabilities Today 80 TAPE GUIDE 82 INDEX 83 SERIES INTRODUCTION- -The Disability Rights and Independent Living Movement , by Simi Lint on When I was asked to write the introduction to the Bancroft Library s oral histories on the disability rights movement in Berkeley, it reminded me of the summer of 1975, when I left New York City and headed out to Berkeley, California. For Berkeley was the place to be I told my friends, filled with hippies and free love. I would spend the summer, take courses at the university. I had been disabled just a few years and this was my first trip on my own, away from the tight circle of family and friends I had relied on in those early years. Someone had told me that Berkeley was a center of disability activism, but I didn t tally that in my list of reasons to go there. I was a naive young woman in my twenties, and still new to disability. I "managed" my disability by keeping its profile low, and its needs in check. I use a wheelchair, and did then, and decided I would need to call the disabled students office at the university to get help finding an accessible apartment near the campus, but also decided this would be the only concession I would make to my disabled state. I was fine, I told myself and my family, and by that I meant I could go anywhere, I could do everything. Disability would not bog me down and it would not mark me. While bold on the outside, I harbored the deep fear that I might fail in my ability to keep disability in its place, that it would come crashing in around me and swallow me up. I, therefore, was completely unprepared for the headlong leap I made that summer toward disability, toward the people and the territory that I had shunned. I never imagined that I would move toward disability with interest and gusto. It didn t happen all at once in that brief summer, but I call that time in Berkeley my coming out. I had arrived in a place where disability seemed more ordinary than it was where I had come from, where accommodations were apparent, where the curbcuts on every corner made it possible for me to go to the supermarket, to the bookstore and up to campus without having to stop someone at each corner, explain to them how to tilt my wheelchair back, take it down the curb, and lift it back up on the other side. Although Berkeley may not have had significantly more disabled people than other places, it seemed to. Maybe it was because I was out on the streets more than I was in New York. I saw people acting out the daily routines of lifegoing to the supermarket, school or their jobsusing wheelchairs or crutches, brandishing white canes, using sign language and all of the other indicators of membership. ii And life started to become easier and more flavorful, not by avoiding disability but by living with it in a different way. The lure of the other disabled people I saw was great, and I learned that it was those people, most I never got to meet, who were responsible for the curb cuts, accessible bathrooms, the independent living center where I went for help, and the disabled students office that had found an apartment for me. I had never seen any place where disabled people were in charge and it thrilled me and made me optimistic about my life in a way that no other experience could.