I had a very normal childhood until I was eight. That's when I got polio, during what was called the polio epidemic. There were about ten of us in town. Ten kids that got polio. To this day, my mother has always kept track of the other parents. The parents have sort of kept a loose relationship. Every now and then I'll get a message from Mom telling me, "So and so's parents asked about you, Alice."

My vision for the future is to manage growing older physically and still keep active. I've always been active. I never grew up feeling I was different than anybody. Anything I could do, I did. But as I've grown older, I've learned to recognize that I can't keep up the level of physical activity. I'm much more aware of physical barriers and much more intolerant. I think if I had a vision of society, it would all be flat. There would be no steps and everything would be on one floor. It would be very boring, and I would be unhappy to live that way, but I would get around.

I delivered a son. I was told I couldn't deliver a son this way. I was basically told, "You can't have a child." This was based on old ideas that were totally outdated, so in some ways I never saw myself as a parent.

I did Outward Bound up in Minnesota. Outward Bound is a wilderness challenge and I did it when I was in my mid-thirties. I did it just because I was bored. I had kind of accomplished a lot of things and I thought, what can you do that is different?

I backpacked across Isle Royal, an island off Lake Superior. You fly in and take a boat, then you backpack the length of the island, 37 miles. That was fun because I always enjoy the outdoors and the physical challenge with a group of people who were able to accept me. I slowed them up, but we just kept plugging along. Some days the other people were slower than I was.

I was always going to go to college. That was never a question in my family. There was an attempt (at the school) to counsel me out of Occupational Therapy because they didn't feel that I could physically do it. I just looked at them and said, "Yes, I can," and proceeded to go through the major and do fine.

I was turned down for a job this was before the Americans with Disabilities Act. I was asked if I could do part of the job which was a transfer of a 250-pound man from a bicycle seat to a wheelchair. I told them that I could not do that safely and I'm pretty sure I was rejected from the job because I couldn't do that task. Now that I'm an educated person, (I know that) nobody should be doing that regardless of whether they have a disability or not it's an unsafe situation. The question was unfair and I think I was turned down because of my disability.

One place where I don't look disabled is when I'm swimming. That is the time that I look like everybody else. My fantasy has always been to swim in the Olympics. I figured I could do the backstroke because it didn't require diving off the platform, which I can't do for a nickel. I thought, I'll go and break the record. That was my fantasy. Still is, but now I'm an adult. I could compete with the best of them.

My hero is Franklin Delano Roosevelt. There was a great attempt to cover up his polio. He was never shown in public in a wheelchair and only in his later days was he ever shown in a wheelchair. It was a big charade. They call it the FDR syndrome, as if they never had the disease. For some people, I'm sure that's been a real barrier to the development of who they are.

If you walk funny and you're in a wheelchair, or maybe have a vision impairment or maybe don't hear properly, that shouldn't prevent people from their activities, but it does. Persons with disabilities have the same interests (as other persons). They do crazy things, they do great things, they have the same kinds of goals and visions.