Last night over dinner with friends I learned that Harriet McBryde Johnson has passed away.
My first thought was: “How can we tell our sorrow from our bread?”
We had been talking around the table about untimely death. Not so long ago my friend Deborah Tall died young from breast cancer. She was just hitting her stride as a poet and editor. Her memoir “A Family of Strangers” (which was Published just weeks before her death) is a stunning accomplishment.
Now Harriet has died at 50.
America has lost a disability rights leader and a pioneering voice for dignity and justice.
I don’t want to write obituary prose. I can’t bring myself to do it.
Harriet McBryde Johnson’s wonderful memoir “Too Late to Die Young” should be on America’s summer reading list.
She had the unshakable determination to stand up for the rights of the disabled and she took on public figures who would demean or discount the lives of people whose disabilities scare the pants off of shallow “normates”.
When Jerry Lewis opined in a 1990 “Parade Magazine” piece that in his view being disabled must be like being half a person—Harriet McBryde Johnson took him on.
When Peter Singer opined that certain lives are not worth living she took him on.
She took people on in court as an able attorney.
She took on the Democratic party when it couldn’t see why Terry Schiavo’s story was more than just one family’s tragedy.
She fought for the dignity of human life and fought those forces that would diminish our human experience with sophistry and outworn symbolism.
She will be deeply missed.
Let us carry her flag.
S.K.
LINKS:
Yesterday, from Kay Olson’s The Gimp Parade, where you will also find numerous links to her writings:
Overwhelmingly sad news today: Harriet McBryde Johnson has died at age 50.
Image
description: The photo shows Johnson in a flowered-print navy dress
looking toward the camera. She sits in her wheelchair, though the image
is a close-up focusing on her and not the chair. Johnson leans forward,
right elbow on knee, chin in right hand. She’s a middle-aged white
woman with dark hair in a very long braid trailing over her shoulder
and into her lap. She’s not quite smiling, but looking interestedly
back at you.
The Post and Courier of Charleston, SC, provides a preliminary notice, with a more formal obituary expected soon
Also:
Beth Haller from Media dis&dat,
at a loss for words,
Sad News,
RIP, Harriet McBryde Johnson
Planet of the Blind 
I’m adding Johnson’s memoir one to my list, Steve.
We just got back from the Empire State Senior Games where my beloved husband took the silver medal for his age group in the 5K race walk. Of course I am proud of him, but what really tickled me was an elderly woman who looked like she was doing well to walk at all. She took the bronze medal in her age group, and believe me, she worked harder than anybody else in the race. She had no idea she’d even won a medal, and burst into tears. Now THAT was a moment.
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