www.shannonvalentine.net/11-09-2006_Letter-to-the-Edito -
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Published on: 11/9/2006
Last Visited: 3/23/2007
Delegate Shannon Valentine
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Delegate Shannon Valentine, D-Lynchburg, accepted the challenge last week and found out quickly that life in a wheelchair - even a motorized one - is not a piece of cake.She found that people looked down at her when they talked.She encountered narrow hallways and steep inclines.She discovered that unexpected stops are part of life for the disabled.
And at the end of the day, as Blair Goldstein of The News & Advance reported, Valentine found that even with the motorized wheelchair - priced at $2,200 - she had a sore back.
It was a wonderful exercise that accomplished exactly what Jarvis had hoped.It's too bad that not more of the elected officials from City Council and Bedford and Campbell counties who were asked to participate in the daylong experience did not accept.
From dawn to dusk, Valentine confined herself to the wheelchair and traveled on a Greater Lynchburg Transit Company handicapped-accessible bus.
Like most of those who do not have to rely on a wheelchair for mobility, the delegate thought the exercise would be much easier than it turned out to be."I thought this would be just an easy way to have some sense of what people living with disabilities go through," she said.
She found out that it is not easy.
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While touring L'Arche Blue Ridge Mountains, a home for people with developmental disabilities, Valentine discovered differences between a house planned for wheelchair accessibility and the typical home.
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At the end of the long day of banging into walls, struggling to turn through doorways and negotiating her way up and down steep inclines, Valentine expressed a familiar sentiment of those not slowed by physical ailments."Ya'll, we are very blessed," she said."That's all I can say."
More importantly, she said her day of confinement also taught her several things.One is that she will sit down to talk eye-to-eye with those in a wheelchair.And she said she will talk to others, including her three children, about the importance of acceptance of those whose disabilities mean confinement to a wheelchair.
That was exactly what Rob Jarvis had hoped for.The challenge he issued turned out to be a huge success.
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Shannon Valentine
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