"Justin Dart, An Obituary"

June 22, 2002

By Fred Fay and Fred Pelka, written at Justin Dart's
request.

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
only possible 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 (or 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 at 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 themselves to
"the revolution of empowerment."

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JUSTICE FOR ALL -- A Service of the
American Association of People with Disabilities
www.aapd-dc.org     www.jfanow.org

There's strength in numbers!  Be a part of a national
coalition of people with disabilities and join AAPD today.
www.aapd-dc.org