Laura Hershey (August 11, 1962-Nov 26, 2010) was a poet, a journalist, a popular speaker, a feminist, and a disability rights activist and consultant. Known to have parked her wheelchair in front of buses, Hershey was one of the leaders of a protest against the paternalistic attitudes and images of people with disabilities inherent to Jerry Lewis's MDA telethon.[1] She was a regular columnist for the Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation, Crip Commentary and was published in a variety of magazines and websites. She was admired for her wit, her ability to structure strong arguments in the service of justice, and her spirited refusal to let social responses to her spinal muscular atrophy define the parameters of her life as anything less than a full human existence.[2] She was also the mother of an adopted daughter.[3]
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Born in Colorado, Hershey lived in a wheelchair (later a powered chair) and was a poster child for Jerry Lewis's Muscular Dystrophy Association when young. She grew up to protest the MDA's telethons, arguing they projected an image of people with muscular dystrophy as pitiful people whose lives are not worth living.[4]
Hershey and her partner of 20 years, Robin Stephens, had adopted a 14-year-old daughter. Hershey died November 26, 2010, after a short illness.
Hershey earned a BA in History in 1983 from Colorado College, where a number of classes had to be relocated so she could attend them because some of their buildings were not accessible. On her graduation, she received a Watson Fellowship, which allowed her to travel and write and led to her involvement in the global disability rights movement.[5] She went on to get an MFA in Creative Writing from Antioch University Los Angeles.
She twice attended United Nations conferences on women's rights, one in Nairobi, Kenya, and one in Beijing, China. Her activism included campaigns to remove Social Security work disincentives, to challenge the negative images of the Jerry Lewis MDA Telethon, to increase visibility of LGBTQ people with disabilities, to improve Medicaid home and community-based services, and to promote the rights of home care workers. She was active in many committees, and organizations ADAPT, Not Dead Yet, and the 'Colorado Cross-Disability Coalition', among others.
Colorado College awarded Hershey an honorary doctorate in recognition of her achievements in 1993.
Other of her poems appear in: