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"We didn't want a nursing home saying, we are a Center for Independent Living, we're eligible for that money." David Nelson talks about the establishment of Centers for Independent Living (CILs) in Indiana. He describes a successful effort in Indiana…

"We didn't want a nursing home saying, we are a Center for Independent Living, we're eligible for that money." David Nelson talks about the establishment of Centers for Independent Living (CILs) in Indiana. He describes a successful effort in Indiana…

"I'm one who has educational conversations about dwarfism with the world." In this excerpt from a 2017 interview, Columbus, Indiana resident Ethan Crough discusses the portrayal of people with dwarfism in popular media, depictions that have…

“You don’t have the right to deny them the opportunity to try this.” Mary Lou Melloy's daughter, Cindy, was born in 1958. Doctors told the family they should put Cindy in a residential facility. Mary Lou and her husband, Don, had other plans for…

“They asked me to work on the objective of developing an Arc in every county in Indiana,” says Don Melloy. Don would take off after to work to travel around the state meeting with parents and community members. He would discuss the benefits of…

“We were scratching our heads saying, this is wrong. This isn't the right way to do it, but I'm not sure what the right way is,” describes Patrick Sandy of his experience with the Deinstitutionalization Project at the Developmental Training Center…

"Even though professionals are very good and a lot of times very empathetic, it's still not the same as having lived it 24 hours a day." As both a parent of an adult daughter with intellectual/developmental disabilities and a retired disability…

“We have an opinion and it matters,” states Kelsey Cowley. Unfortunately, Kelsey didn’t feel many people listened to her during her school years. She says, “They just didn’t understand people with disabilities to the whole extent.” As President of…

"I must be completely honest - I was not the first person to introduce the Americans with Disabilities Act," retired U.S. Senator Tom Harkin pointed out in an interview with the Indiana Disability History Project. In fact, Senator Harkin had been one…

On December 24, 1958, Mary Lou and Don Melloy were told their daughter Cindy should be placed in an institution. Mary Lou said, “My response was that they didn’t know what they were talking about…a very unhappy, aggressive mother left the room.”…