Wheelchairs are used by people for whom walking is difficult or impossible due to an illness, injury, or disability. The earliest record of the wheelchair in England dates from the 1670s.
Here are some famous people who use and used wheelchairs:
STEPHEN HAWKING
- Stephen Hawking
He is a well-known example of a person with Motor Neuron Disease (MND), and has lived for more than 40 years with it. The internationally renowned physicist/mathematician has defied time and doctors’ diagnosis that he would not live 2-years beyond his 21st birthday after he was diagnosed with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), also referred to as Lou Gehrig’s Disease. The symptoms are very similar to those of Cerebral Palsy. He cannot walk and talk, and has difficulty in holding up his head, swallowing, and breathing. He has been using a special computer that displays the text he types and speaks what he types with an electronic voice.
Hawking knew what he wanted to do by the time he was eight. He did not want to study medicine, a career his parents hoped he would follow. Instead, he decided to be a scientist and chose physics. He was interested in studying the universe. He attended Oxford University in England, as an undergraduate student. He received his Ph.D. in 1966 from Cambridge University. By the time he was 35 years old, he was Cambridge’s first Gravitational Physics professor and received the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics Award. He has also published a book called A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes. The book tries to explain many of his physical and mathematical ideas and calculations without using math. The book became a best seller and was made into a movie.
FRANKLIN DELANO ROOSEVELT
- Franklin Delano Roosevelt
He was the 32nd President of the United States. Elected to four terms in office, he served from 1933 to 1945, and is the only U.S. president to have served more than two terms of office. In August 1921, while his family were vacationing at Campobello Island, New Brunswick, he contracted a near fatal case of polio, which resulted in his total and permanent paralysis from the waist down. He refused to accept that he was permanently paralyzed. He tried a wide range of therapies, including hydrotherapy. Fitting his hips and legs with iron braces, he laboriously taught himself to walk a short distance by swiveling his torso while supporting himself with a cane. In private, he used a wheelchair, but he was careful never to be seen in it in public. In 2003, a peer-reviewed study found that it was more likely that his paralytic illness was actually Guillain-Barré Syndrome, not Poliomyelitis.
Pres. Roosevelt established a foundation at Warm Springs, Georgia to help other people who had polio, and he directed the March of Dimes Program that eventually funded an effective vaccine.
THEODORE DEREESE PENDERGRASS, SR.
- Theodore DeReese Pendergrass, Sr.
His career began when he was a drummer for The Cadillacs, which soon merged with Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes. He was invited by Melvin to become the lead singer after he jumped from the rear of a stage and started singing his heart out. On March 18, 1982, in Philadelphia, he was involved in an automobile accident when the brakes failed on his Rolls Royce and he hit a tree, leaving him paralyzed from the waist down with a spinal cord injury. After completing six months in rehabilitation, he returned to the studio to record the album Love Language, featuring the 1984 ballad “Hold Me”, a duet with a then-unknown Whitney Houston.
CHRISTOPHER REEVE
- Christopher Reeve
He was an American actor, director, producer, and writer. He portrayed Superman/Kal-El/Clark Kent in four films, from 1978 to 1987. In the 1980s, he also starred in several films, including Somewhere in Time (1980), Deathtrap (1982), The Bostonians (1984), and Street Smart (1987). In May 1995, he was paralyzed in an accident during an equestrian competition. His horse balked at a rail jump, pitching him forward where he landed head first. His injuries left the actor paralyzed, unable to use any of his limbs or even to breathe without the help of a respirator. He was confined to a wheelchair for the rest of his life. He lobbied on behalf of people with spinal cord injuries, and for human embryonic stem cell research after his accident. He founded the Christopher Reeve Foundation and co-founded the Reeve-Irvine Research Center. He was dedicated to increasing public awareness about spinal cord injury and to raising money for research for a cure. He was also the Chairman of the American Paralysis Association and Vice Chairman of the National Organization on Disability. He died at age 52 on October 10, 2004 from cardiac arrest caused by a systemic infection. Never has a person with a disability commanded so much media attention in recent history.
ITZHAK PERLMAN
- Itzhak Perlman
He is an Israeli-American violinist, conductor, and pedagogue. He is one of the most distinguished violinists of the late 20th century. He contracted polio at the age of four. He made a good recovery, learning to walk with the use of crutches. Today he uses a wheelchair or walks with the aid of crutches on his arms and plays the violin while seated. Critics say it is not the music alone that makes his playing so special. They say he is able to communicate the joy he feels in playing, and the emotions that great music can deliver.
Perlman began his music career at the Academy of Music in Tel-Aviv, Israel. In 1958, at the age of 13, he won in an Israeli talent competition. This made it possible for him to travel to the United States to tour and appear on television. He then stayed in the U.S. and continued his musical training at the Juilliard School in New York City. In 1964, he won a contest among young musicians known as the Leventritt Competition. Winning opened doors for him to perform his violin music all over the world. In 1986, he received the nation’s Medal of Liberty from U.S. President Ronald Reagan. His joy of making music has captivated audiences and has achieved him a level of respect and admiration among people of many nations. Great violin concertos make up the core of his recorded music, ranging from the baroque to the contemporary. He is also featured in the hit movie Music of the Heart.
Itzhak is also a well known advocate for people with disabilities, actively promoting laws to ease access to buildings and transportation.
TANNI GREY THOMPSON
- Tanni Grey Thompson
She is the disabled athlete that most people instantly recognize. She has competed in Paralympic Games since 1988, representing Britain at distances ranging from 100m to 800m. She has won fourteen paralympic medals including nine golds, and has broken over twenty world records. As a wheelchair athlete, she was also the winner of London marathons in 1992, 1994, 1996, 1998 and 2001. In recent years, she has established herself as a TV presenter, including BBC TWO’s From the Edge disability magazine programme.
PAT STACK
- Pat Stack
He was a left-wing revolutionary, and was part of the Socialist Workers Party’s organizing committee. He uses a wheelchair, resulting from a Thalidomide pregnancy. Unlike Roosevelt, he does not keep his disability hidden. As well as having a brilliant political understanding, he is a great speaker and does several meetings every year at Marxism in London. He wrote the “Stack On The Back” article in Socialist Review, the SWP’s monthly magazine, from the 1980s until late 2004.
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