By Ross Eric Gibson

We are honoring July’s Disability Pride Month with the continuing biography of Terry Brickley, based on a manuscript by his life partner of 13 years, Sally Jorgensen. Brickley lost his job in 1960 from unusual symptoms, which his doctor finally diagnosed as multiple sclerosis. Due to a tragedy in his family, Brickley left his marriage in 1971 and moved into a one-car garage on Pleasure Point, the first place he would fix up to suit his changing mobility needs.

Brickley had tried to find work designing and building adaptive devices for disabled people, but no such job was available. In fact, he couldn’t even obtain a catalog of rehabilitation equipment. Wheelchair user Dr. Glenn Reynolds, of Valley Medical Center in San Jose, told him he needed to establish credibility with a business card and letterhead stationery, and the best way would be to apply for nonprofit status. So in 1972, 40-year-old Brickley established “Adaptability Unlimited,” a nonprofit and educational corporation advocating for disabled needs, and sponsorship of new ideas and inventions for services to the disabled.

Brickley became executive director, with a board consisting of Dr. Duncan Holbert (an iron lung user), co-founder of the Stroke Club Beverly Harris, Plantronics design engineer Eric Lenquist, CPA Michael Sparkman, wheelchair using lawyer Bob Ludlow, physical therapist Gene Fleming, psychologist David Newgen, and mechanical manufacturer Bill James. Brickley also placed his father, Joe Brickley, on the board, to witness his son’s work and be proud, and he was, approval that had been a long time coming.

Sentinel

What little information on disabilities Terry Brickley could find, was targeted at medical professionals, with nothing available at the library. Brickley met Sentinel staff writer Barbara Burklo at a library art show, and he proposed writing a column to bring disabled interests to the public, to be as readable as “Hints from Heloise.” Sentinel editor Gordon “Scotchy” Sinclair said yes, and “HANDICAPsules” debuted in the Sentinel Nov. 5, 1972. Sentinel writer Tom Honig thought the column was the best thing he’d read, then met Brickley, surprised he wasn’t a kindly booster, but an in-your-face advocate.

Brickley asked for readers to write in about their questions, needs or solutions, and he sometimes took polls to learn how readers felt about different issues. The column was soon picked up by the Monterey Herald and San Jose Mercury. Brickley tried to syndicate it but got rejections until he was advised to broaden the scope from just listing Central California resources to national resources. As a result, the column was syndicated nationwide, becoming an invaluable resource and forum for the disabled, doctors, caregivers and the elderly. What began in the Sentinel became an important tool of disabled advocacy for years. One reader said to put a phone in the bathroom, the most dangerous room in the house. Brickley not only called out needs and asked readers to contact political representatives but also wrote columns to thank people involved in bringing about positive change.

This was the Civil Rights era, when Black people, women and gay people fought the fallacy that “separate but equal” always meant “not equal at all.” Brickley started to realize the reason he never saw many disabled people around town, was because most places were not designed for wheelchairs or crutches. In 1972, he started asking local officials for ramps to improve the accessibility of public buildings, especially where the public’s business was being decided. He was confrontational, provocative and blunt, telling doubters, “I don’t want special treatment, I want equal treatment!” This was a paradigm shift for many disabled people, who’d always been left to feel their inability to get around was a personal problem, not a community problem. Brickley would say, “I pay my taxes, too! Equal access is not a hand out, but a civil right!”

Brickley attended a Board of Supervisors meeting, and there was no place for a wheelchair, so he planted himself in the aisle as intrusively as possible, with his withering glare noticed by the supervisors. At another meeting, eight other wheelchair users filled the space in front of the front row, blocking all the microphones. A year after Brickley’s 1972 request for greater access, the City Hall, Civic Auditorium and County Government Center provided ramps in 1973.

Disadvantaging

The next battle would be for accessible restrooms. Most restrooms did not accommodate wheelchair users, had narrow stall doors that opened inward, with no grab bars and a low toilet. In 1974, Brickley got the brilliant notion of putting officials in wheelchairs so they could experience how hard it was to get around town. Many were shocked at how even a mere curb could be a major barrier. Supervisor Gary Patton couldn’t believe the incredible strength it took to operate a wheelchair. In Soquel Village, Supervisor Dan Forbus became so frightened trying to cross Soquel Drive at Porter Street in a wheelchair, that 24 hours later he installed the first curb-cut in the county and one of the first in the nation.

Some tried a simple solution of attaching a ramp off the sidewalk, but to prevent the ramp from sticking out in traffic, it was short and steep. Brickley tried to use the ramp in front of the City Council, only to tip over backwards, with his head nearly getting hit by a passing bus. The horrified officials never built that kind of ramp again. Brickley kept emphasizing ramps were not just for the disabled, but for pregnant women, those with strollers, and the elderly.

Another problem was parking spaces without room to open one’s door all the way or transfer from the front seat to a wheelchair. In 1974, Brickley asked for designated handicap parking spaces that were wider than usual. After much debate, the City Council said six spaces would be provided on a 30-day trial basis and removed if they didn’t show sufficient use. Brickley put up signs, “Parking for the Handicapped,” then he parked for an hour in one, went for coffee, then moved across town to park in another, and did this for a month to make sure the spaces were being visibly used.

In 1976, downtown Santa Cruz opened the first accessible toilet in the state. Brickley joked he was afraid they’d call it the Brickley (or words to that effect). But to the disabled with unpredictable regularity, accessible toilets were a major win. Brickley regarded it as so important, he requested the county Board of Supervisors order that all public meetings be accessible to the disabled, with accessible toilets. The supervisors approved the ordinance in spirit but hedged the language to say MOST meetings would be accessible. Brickley found it insulting that supervisors reserved the option to exclude the disabled from a meeting. Nonetheless, when the ordinance became law in 1977, it was the first of its kind in the nation, and copies of it were requested by state offices, and various townships, making it a model for other jurisdictions. Unfortunately, the County Building waited until 1991 to provide accessible toilets.

Disabled access effected public school boards, who now had to have accessible facilities for disabled parents attending school meetings or functions. It led to a “search and serve” mandate to find and educate grade school handicapped children. After a backlash, Brickley asked those opposed to stop regarding disabled students as burdens but as children. Yet the mainstreaming of handicapped children into public schools was a hard sell.

Brickley was called a one-man oversight committee, gadfly and lone ranger. While Brickley hated to be part of “the system,” in 1975, a commissioner was complaining about how much pressure Brickley put on the Transit Board. An assistant said, then give him that vacancy on the board, so he’ll have to face the same realities he likes to complain about. Terry agreed to be appointed if he could get a ramp built in City Hall Chambers up to the dais. He went to a state Transportation Board meeting in Sacramento and became a lesson in inclusion when he had to be lifted onto an inaccessible stage, and complained he’d been booked into an inaccessible hotel.

Transit

At Brickley’s urging, the nonprofit Volunteer Services of Santa Cruz joined the transit board to create specially adapted vans for the impaired and elderly. This would become known as Lift Line. Then the project to have lifts installed on buses hit a snag when the lifts were found to be at a dangerous angle. Yet over the objections of many, it was finally decided to buy the buses anyway so the industry couldn’t use this as an excuse that lifts on buses don’t work. The buses were used without activating the lifts, and Terry was instrumental in the next order of buses to make sure lifts were designed correctly. By 1980, there were 23 working bus lifts locally, showing buses with lifts were more economically feasible when integrated into the transit system. It wasn’t for people to meet the needs of the system but for the system to meet the needs of the people.

Santa Cruz became the model of accessibility and was looked to by other districts around the state and nation. What made Brickley so successful was that he pointed out problems while also presenting solutions. Brickley was doing incremental projects, one at a time, and someone asked why he didn’t do a full master plan. He replied, “If you want too much at once, they’ll complain that there isn’t enough money, and not do anything. But there’s always enough money to do some little project!”

On Sept. 22, 1978, the “Terry Brickley Center for Exceptional Children” was dedicated, serving 30 children with severe mental or multiple disabilities. In 1979, Capitola Police Chief Bob Allen contacted Brickley with an idea of hiring six disabled people as code enforcement officers. They were called the “Quad Squad,” whose wheelchair officers patrolled parking violations in Capitola and gained national media attention. Brickley could be self-centered, by his own admission. But he seldom took credit for his accessibility successes, always acknowledging those others who helped make them possible.

Brickley had gone from a troubled childhood, to a diagnosis of M.S. Sally Jorgensen asked him once, “What would your life have been like if you hadn’t had M.S.?” and Brickley replied “I’d be dead.” It was a remarkable realization that M.S. had made him his best self. All his early anger, rebellion and empathy for the underdog found its positive outlet in his advocacy. Without his drive and pushiness, few of his disability successes would have happened. Bill Neubauer, disabled Sentinel features editor, delighted in “Terry’s evolution from a tart-tonged, overly emotional advocate, into a skilled and effective community educator on the needs and rights of handicapped people.”

Next time, the conclusion to Brickley’s biography.

RECOMMENDED: “Crip Camp: A Disability Revolution” (2020), a raw, honest documentary of some of the origins and issues that gave birth to this movement. Tells more than a camp’s history, going from the Catskills, to activism in the Bay Area and D.C.