TMC PULSE

6 T M C » P U L S E | J U LY 2 0 1 8 Spotlight For nearly half a century, Houston disability rights activist LEX FRIEDEN has worked to ensure that Americans of all abilities receive equal access to public services. In addition to his role as an advocate, he serves as a professor at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth) School of Biomedical Informatics, a professor of physical medicine and rehabilitation at UTHealth's McGovern Medical School and an adjunct professor of physical medicine and rehabilitation at Baylor College of Medicine. Q | July 26, 2018 marks the 28th anniver- sary of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). What does it mean to you to have played a leading role in such a monumental piece of legislation? A | This year, 2018, is 50 years after I graduated from what is now TIRR Memorial Hermann, 40 years after we founded the Independent Living Research Utilization (ILRU) Program at TIRR and 30 years after the Metropolitan Multi-Service Center opened. I'm just thankful. I'm thankful that President Ronald Reagan and the 15 appointed members of the National Council on the Handicapped hired me to be the director of that agency. I'm thankful that I had the opportunity to write the report that asked for the ADA. I'm thankful that I had the chance to write the original draft of the ADA. I'm thankful for the experiences that I had. I don't feel particularly, personally, responsible for it—I just feel thankful. Q | You have worked for decades to encourage disability awareness in Houston and across the United States. After your injury, what motivated you to activism? A | Every time you do something, you learn something—or you ought to. Every time you learn something, you ought to find a way to apply that knowledge. I happened to have opportunities to apply what I learned and I seized those opportunities. Q | In 1968, an automobile accident in Oklahoma left you paralyzed from the neck down. How did you find your way to TIRR and what was your rehabilitation experience? A | My dad visited the Rusk Institute of Rehabilitation Medicine in New York, the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago and TIRR [which stood for Texas Institute of Rehabilitation and Research at that time] in Houston while I was at the hospital in Oklahoma City. He came back from the last visit at TIRR and he said: 'There's no question. We should go to TIRR.' Two weeks later, I was in a medical airlift from Oklahoma City to Houston to TIRR, and I spent the next three months in what I would call a boot camp. Every morning, I was getting up and doing exercises. One thing that was different about rehab then compared to now is that we used to have wards, so there were five other patients in the room with me and, at night, there was a lot of really cool social interaction that went on. We talked about coping with our disabilities. We talked about how we got hurt. We talked about being stupid kids. We asked the older guys: 'Does life get better?' I'll never forget the kind of interchange that went on and the kinds of things we collectively thought about and dreamed about. Q | When you left TIRR, what helped you adjust to living with a disability? A | Years before I got hurt, I liked amateur radio. The radio was really cool because I could get on and nobody would see me. They didn't know I had a disability. We didn't have to talk about that. While my friends were outside playing basket- ball and everything, I had something to do and I was enjoying myself. It was giving me a sense of well-being. One day on the radio, I heard this deep voice call back to me. He had a British voice and his call sign was unique—it was JY1. I knew JY meant Jordan and the No. 1 must be the first person licensed in Jordan. Can this be the King of Jordan? And it was. I kind of had this catharsis and I said: 'Here I am, sitting in my little room in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and my friends are outside playing. I always thought it was so cool that they could be outside playing and I felt bad for myself, but here I am talking to the King of Jordan.' I told him thank you and that he made my day, but he told me: 'Lex, I can't go outside either. There's a war going on outside.' He told me it's not all about where you are or who you're talking to at any given time. It's about what you think about your- self, whether you think you are doing the right thing and whether you're doing the best you can despite all of the odds against you. I remembered that lesson all my life and that sort of brought me out of my depression.

• Cover