"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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