The anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) is an important occasion for all Americans. When former President George H.W. Bush signed the ADA into law, he declared that the shameful wall of society’s exclusion of the disabled should come down.
My daughter Alexandra, “Alex,” was born with a cardiac disability. Shortly after her birth, nurses noticed she had a circulatory problem. My family lived in the Washington, D.C. area. Alex was transferred to Georgetown University Hospital where cardiac surgeons diagnosed transposition of the arteries in her small heart.
Alex required immediate cardiac surgery. Based on the enormity of the cardiac problem and the smallness of Alex, I did not believe she would survive the long and complicated surgery. The surgeons worked overnight and into the next day.
Alex survived her heart surgery that early March morning in 1989, the year before the ADA was signed into law. She survived several other surgeries but required a long recovery period.
I was in the U.S. Foreign Service when senior diplomats told me that Alex would be an “insurance burden” to the government if she traveled abroad with me. They meant that Alex would be a management burden to them.
Senior diplomats removed me from the Foreign Service to a lesser job in the Civil Service. I was demoted due to Alex’s disability. I filed a disability discrimination complaint, identified as 921203, with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Several U.S. Senators, including Senator Charles Grassley (R-IA), moved to make the State Department comply with all the provisions of the ADA.
I fought my demotion from the Foreign Service. I felt that Alex would grow to be an adult with a disability. She might face less discrimination, I thought, when I won my case for her.
Since childhood my family taught me to respect for the disabled. My mom was named Helen in honor of Alabamian Helen Keller, who was born deaf and blind. My parents and grandparents taught me that all people had challenges to overcome in their lives.
I also learned to respect the disabled from my Alabama Sunday School lessons. In the Old Testament, when the Jews left Egypt for the Holy Land, they proudly took the aged and disabled. All people had value in the Holy Land. As an adult, I recalled that Sunday School lesson and determined that, regardless of what senior diplomats at the State Department said, my disabled daughter had value in America.
My fight with the State Department lasted from 1992 to 1995. Senior diplomats changed their “final,” “non-appealable,” and “irreversible” decision about my right to be in the diplomatic corps with my disabled daughter on Monday, January 23, 1995. Why did they reverse their “irreversible” decision?
On Sunday, January 22, the New York Times ran a 950-word article about the “irreversible” decision by the arrogant State Department diplomats who called my daughter an “insurance burden.” The next day, I was appointed to the diplomatic corps.
The State Department’s senior diplomats learned that disability had nothing to do with ability. It was a lesson I learned from the life of Helen Keller and my Alabama Sunday School classes.
Alex lived to be 17. She was a brave and beautiful young woman. She was never a burden to her parents or her country. It is the wrongminded senior U.S. diplomats who are burdens to America and foreign policy.
Time and chance make people. The Americans with Disabilities Act and Alex Patterson were born about the same time. Both made important contributions to disability rights.
James Patterson, a life member of the Auburn University Alumni Association, is a writer and speaker in the Washington, D.C. area.