By Gregg J. Donaldson
I once again attended the 6th Annual DateAble Image Awards, held at The Monarch Hotel, in Washington, D.C. The awards were held in April.
Dateable's own Executive Director, Robert Watson, was this year's Master of Ceremonies, replacing Rick Douglas, who passed away last year. Robert called Douglas a mentor, and said, "Rick's spirit fills this room, for all who knew him and we celebrate his life."
Another notable speaker was Dr. I. King Jordan, President of Gallaudet University and this year's Honorary Chairman. By way of introduction a video clip was shown of how the students were rallying for a President like themselves, to represent them, about a decade ago.
Dr. Jordan said, "That film clip reminds me of the first days and weeks of my administration everyone was being nice and asking me softball questions, including the media. I thought to myself: 'This is easy'. Then a journalist asked me, 'What can deaf people do?' I answered, "We can do anything but hear."
He continued, "Today, it's not a question of what we can't do, but what we ARE doing with our lives and tonight's a celebration of that, Jordan said.
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Dr. Jordan at dinner table with Jane Kerschner
Once again this year's honorees were a diverse group of people. Mr. Howard E. "Rocky" Stone, Sr., received the Accessibility Advocate Leader Award, the Wynn Brothers, Steve and Ken, received the Corporate Award, on behalf of the Mirage Resorts, Inc. Ms. Pat A. Wright, received the Civil Rights Leader Award, and Dr. Kay Redfield Jamison, received the Rick Douglas Advocacy Award, for her work as a Professor and Author, in the Mental Health field.
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Howard Rocky Stone, Center and Robert Watson, Right.
About the Honorees
Howard "Rocky" Stone Sr.
Accessibility Advocate Leader Award
Howard "Rocky " Stone is the founder and Executive Director/Emeritus, of Self Help for Hard of Hearing People, Inc. (SHHH) founded in November 1979. Today, SHHH is accepted as the pre-eminent consumer organization for people who do not hear well. SHHH is an educational organization involving its members in local meetings and activities, instructing them about hearing loss, its detection, management and possible prevention of further loss. There are now over 250 groups and chapters, meeting in 49 states, a sister organization in Australia, and members in fifteen countries. He retired from SHHH in June 1993.
In August 1996, Mr. Stone was elected president of the International Federation of Hard of Hearing People (IFHOH), and is a member of the board of directors of Hearing International, an organization of otolaryngologists who are dedicated to the prevention and management of hearing impairment an/d deafness around the world. Mr. Stone is also a member of the board of directors of Cochlear implant Club International (CICI). Mr. Stone travels extensively and is an internationally known speaker.
He experienced a bilateral hearing loss in World War II. Following his Army service he was graduated from the University of Southern California and completed one year in the Masters Studies program at the School of Advanced International Studies, John Hopkins University. He then spent 25 years in foreign service. He holds an Honorary Doctorate from Gallaudet University. Since his retirement in 1975, Rocky has devoted his time and energies to working for the welfare of hard of hearing people, focusing attention on their interests in health and human services, government, academia, and industry and research. He is married to Alice Marie Stone. They have two boys, two girls, and ten grandchildren.
As "Rocky" Stone graciously accepted his award, he delighted the crowd with stories from his personal and foreign service life. He also paid homage to another disability rights pioneer, Paul G. Hearne. Rocky told how much Paul had "inspired him", as they worked closely together on many projects, over the years.
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Howard Rocky Stone, making his acceptance speech.
Steve and Ken Wynn
Mirage Resorts, Inc., Corporate Award
Mr. Steve Wynn attended the University of Pennsylvania and Wharton Business School. It was during this time that Wynn met his future wife, Miss Miami Beach Elaine Paschal, then a student at UCLA. Ken attended Swarthmore College where he received a Bachelor of Arts in French Literature, and later earned a Masters in Business Administration from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. In 1973, Ken moved west to work with his brother
Steve Wynn opened The Mirage in 1989, changing the face of Las Vegas forever. Earlier, in 1981 Ken Wynn was named president of Atlandia Design and Furnishings, where he serves as Mirage Resorts' senior design and construction official. The founding of Mirage Resorts spawned an almost immediate $5 billion building boom in Las Vegas, including The Mirage's neighboring resort, Treasure Island in 1993. Mirage Resorts' crowning achievement, however, debuted on October 15, 1998, when the $1.6 billion Bellagio opened with its $300 million fine art collection, refined Tuscan decor, and spectacular attention to detail.
If Steve Wynn is Mirage Resorts' visionary leader, then it is Ken Wynn who brings those visions to life. Over the past 16 years Ken has overseen Mirage Resorts' properties as well as and Treasure Island at The Mirage. The design and development of the Atlantic City Project, Le Jardin, is also underway.
Steve Wynn lives with retinitis pigmentosa, an inherited, incurable disease that gradually destroys a person's retinas and optic nerve, slowly reducing the field of vision until blindness occurs. Both he and Ken serve as National Trustees and Members of the Executive Committee of the Foundation Fighting Blindness. Ken is also a member of the Board of the John Moran Eye Center at the University of Utah, and the Jenna Druck Foundation. Mirage Resorts' advocacy, however, expands well beyond the Wynn family's personal issues. The company sponsors Voice, a newsletter and community outreach program in Las Vegas.
Ken Wynn accepted the Corporate Award on behalf of his brother Steve, and the Mirage Resorts. He told how much of a concerted effort they have made in making their Resorts and entertainment areas accessible to everyone, such as having lower game tables and slot machines for people in wheelchairs. As well as having lifts in the guests' bathrooms, for easier access and other accommodations for people with visual and hearing impairments.
Pat A Wright
Civil Rights Leader Award
Patrisha A. Wright is the Director of Government Affairs for the Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund, Inc. and is best known as 'the General" for her role as the principal strategist in the campaign for passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA). In this effort, she brought together lawyers representing all of the major disability organizations, and orchestrated a grassroots campaign that included thousands activists from the broadest coalition of disability groups ever assembled, Wright, urging people with disabilities to 'wake up to the discrimination we all accept as part of our lives,' called on them to keep 'discrimination diaries" to 'educate yourselves and Congress." More than 25,000 such diaries were presented Congress. Publicly and privately Wright advanced a strategy of 'united we stand, divided we fall.'
Ms. Wright's career as the premiere strategist in the campaign to gain civil rights for people with disabilities began in 1977. Wright was directing the graduate program in the Psychology of Physical Disability and Health Services Administration for Antioch's San Francisco campus. At that time, disabled activists began their demonstrations to force Department of Health, Education and Welfare (HEW) Secretary Califano to sign regulations implementing Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. When she realized that most of her students were participating in the sit-in at the San Francisco HEW offices, Wright suspended classes and joined them. She traveled to Washington, DC serving as the lead strategist and assistant to the group. Wright has been committed to advancing the civil rights of people with disabilities ever since and in 1980 was one of the principle founders of DREDF.
Wright, along with DREDF, plotted a strategy to defend and advance disability rights, using community education through legal analysis. Notable campaigns include: halting the Reagan administration plans to gut the regulations implementing the Education for All Handicapped Children Act of 1975; Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973; the passage of the Handicapped Children's Protection Act of 1986 and the Civil Rights Restoration Act of 1987.
In 1988, when proposed amendments to the Fair Housing Act to include protection for people with disabilities, Wright enlisted the support of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights (LCCR), on whose executive committee she served. This landmark alliance was the first step in establishing disability rights as civil rights taking people with disabilities out of the pity model and placing them among the ranks of women and minorities. Wright also played a pivotal role during the early days of the AIDS epidemic establishing HIV/AIDS as a disability in order to afford those infected with the virus the same protections as people with disabilities. She was instrumental in developing the AIDS lobby, and she fought against the discriminatory policies advocated by some members of Congress.
Wright divides her time between DREDF's Washington, DC and Berkeley, California offices. Currently she serves as Vice President of American Association of People with Disabilities, Treasurer of Leadership Conference Education Fund, on the Executive Committee of the President's Committee on People with Disabilities. She also travels internationally to promote equal citizenship and civil rights for people with disabilities.
Ms. Wright in her acceptance briefly expanded on her experiences and thanked others in the disability movement as well, such as Judith Heumann, Assistant Secretary of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services, who introduced her.
Kay Redfield Jamison, Author/Professor
Rick Douglas Advocacy Award
A video clip tribute was paid to Rick Douglas, for whom the award was named after. The clip showed Rick as a friendly, humorous Master of Ceremonies, of the past five DateAble Image Awards. But it also showed a man with feisty opinions and honest convictions. In other words, why he is considered to be a leader in the disability movement.
Dr. Kay Redfield Jamison is Professor of Psychiatry at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. She is the coauthor of the standard medical text on manic depressive illness, which was chosen in 1990 as the Most Outstanding Book in Biomedical Sciences by the American Association of Publishers, and author of Touched with Fire: Manic-Depressive illness and the Artistic Temperament. She is the author or co-author of five books and more than 100 scientific articles about mood disorders, suicide, psychotherapy, and lithium. Her memoir about her own experiences with manic-depressive illness, An Unquiet Mind, was selected by The Boston Globe, Entertainment Weekly, and the Seattle Post Intelligencer as one of the best books of 1995. An Unquiet Mind, currently under development as a feature film, was on The New York Times Bestseller List for more than five months.
Dr. Jamison did her undergraduate and graduate studies at the University of California, Los Angeles where she was a National Science Foundation Research Fellow, University of California Cook Scholar, John F. Kennedy Scholar, United States Public Health Service Pre-doctoral Research Fellow, and UCLA Graduate Woman of the Year. She also studied zoology and neurophysiology at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland.
She was formerly the director of the UCLA Affective Disorders Clinic, and was selected as UCLA Woman of Science and has been cited as one the 'Best Doctors in the United States'. She is recipient of the American Suicide Foundation Research Award, the UCLA Distinguished Alumnus Award, the Fawcett Humanitarian Award from the National Depressive and Manic-Depressive Association, the Steven V. Logan Award for Research into Brain Disorders from the National Alliance for the Mentally 111, the William Styron Award from the National Mental Health Association, and the McGovern Award for excellence in medical communication. She was selected as one of five individuals for the public television series "Great Minds of Medicine", and chosen by Time magazine as a "Hero of Medicine."
Dr. Jamison was a member of the first National Advisory Council for Human Genome Research, and is currently the clinical director for the Dana Consortium on the Genetic Basis of Manic-Depressive Illness, as well as the Chair of the Genome Action Coalition, a coalition of more than 130 patient groups, pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies. She also serves on the National Committee for Basic Sciences at UCLA, and is the executive producer and writer for a series of award-winning public television specials about manic-depressive illness and the arts. Dr. Jamison is Honorary Professor of English at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. Her most recent book, Night Falls Fast: Understanding Suicide, was selected by the New York Times as a Notable Book of 1999.
In her remarks, she told the audience how supportive John Hopkins University has been throughout her career, and "that through treatment and medication people with mental illness can and do lead productive lives."
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