Celebrating the ADA

It was a busy morning for a crowd of 193 people in wheelchairs gathered at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles July 25. The group first formed the initials “ADA” for a photograph in observance of the 20th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act. Then the wheelchair users formed a queue and officially broke the Guinness world record for “most wheelchairs moving in a continuous line.”

And it all happened before 11 a.m. so everyone could be cleared out in time for a 1 p.m. Dodger home game that afternoon.

Members of the Los Angeles disability community helped recruit their members and constituents to turn out en masse to participate in the event, sponsored by the Christopher & Dana Reeve Foundation. There were also friends from San Diego and Orange County on hand, and one family reportedly drove 800 miles from northern Mexico to join the festivities.

“I think the message of the event is that the number of people with disabilities is large, and they are a significant part of the culture,” says Sam Maddox, knowledge manager of the Reeve Foundation, who came up with the idea for the event.

“We wanted to celebrate that and pay tribute to the ADA, which is an important piece of civil rights legislation. We need to keep it alive and make it better. To see all those wheelchairs in one spot was really something.”

Speakers at the event, including surfer and founder Jesse Billauer of the Life Rolls On Foundation (a subsidiary of the Reeve Foundation dedicated to improving the quality of life for young people affected by spinal cord injury), acknowledged the ADA, signed into law July 26, 1990, as a life-changing measure that has given people living with disabilities better access to employment, transportation and a way to be a part of their communities.

“I started thinking about the 20th anniversary of ADA and thought this would be a great [way] to focus some attention and provide a celebration,” explains Maddox. “It was a fun day in July, and we could come out and enjoy each other’s company. I sent the idea up the line at the Reeve Foundation, and it was immediately appealing. It was visual, unique, had a nice hook and it was advocacy-neutral.

“It was a celebration, and a chance to pause and look at the ADA in a community-based way.”

Moving through a series of cones set in an “S” shape in honor of “Superman” Christopher Reeve, the event participants easily beat the previous world record, set in Vermont, of 106 wheelchairs moving in a continuous line.

The 20,000-space parking lot for Dodger Stadium provided plenty of room for the event, with the iconic stadium standing in the background.