You Need
Calling on Christopher Reeve
We drove through the attractive rural town of Bedford, NY following the directions Christopher Reeve's assistant had emailed. Left at the third fork; right up a lane passing a large farm; rising above a field with horses; round a circular drive; ringing the bell on the door behind the garage…. nothing … then:
"Hello, I'm Dana Reeve". Totally unexpected.
Dana showed us through to the kitchen where her husband was being made up ready for a photo shoot for Esquire magazine. Mr Reeve ("Chris" to Dana and "CR" to his staff) is said to be as busy as he ever has been, and I can believe it. These days he still works as a director as well as being the best known activist in the disability world. He is also a published author with Still Me and Nothing is Impossible - two excellent reads.
 Janet DeSenzo, Trish Hornsey and Martin Littler meet Christopher Reeve. |
Following a letter from rugby star Luke Bryan, suffering spinal injury himself, Christopher Reeve agreed to open the "Transform 2004" conference in Manchester in July next year. Mr Reeve likes England (he worked in London for ten years) and is a stunningly active disability campaigner but I am amazed at the ease with which he and his team accepted the challenge. His six-foot-four-inch frame requires a large motorised wheel chair and his condition requires sturdy head support and an on-board ventilator. Both he and the tracheotomy tube through which he breathes require twenty-four hour nursing attention: five nurses and an assistant is a minimum when travelling. And there is a logistics manger who travels with him and will have made the whole journey weeks before to rehearse every move, organise the special vehicles, the hospital bed and the strip out and rebuild of the hotel room. Overseas travel is the butt of his humour: "If I avoid discos and crowded buses, I'm OK" he told us.
We were far too early and very much in the way. Dana drove us to the smarter of the two Bedford Delis where we bought ourselves a take-out lunch. Back at the Reeves home we ate our sandwiches in their dining room, which was beautifully panelled with a collage of charts of the eastern seaboard where CR loves to sail. Perched at an unusually high "high dining suite" made from some unworldly looking banded wood, and in Superman's home, we felt like extra characters in Alice in Wonderland.
The Transform 2004 Conference is still a year distant (July 7-10, 2004) and it has been a bit "Alice" all the way so far. Trish Hornsey, Roger Bates and I had the idea for a world assistive technology conference in a car travelling down to the London BETT conference in January this year. BETT is a great place to meet people, and within hours we had the enthusiastic support from Chris Stevens of Becta and enough interest from the TTA and the Education Departments in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland to realise it was high time that we celebrated the impact that assistive technology has made in the twenty years since it became possible to remove barriers to learning and communication using computer technology.
Despite their merger with the University of Manchester that virtually coincides with the conference, UMIST jumped at hosting it. Their compact Manchester city centre campus is an ideal venue: Piccadilly Station is next door and Manchester Airport is a gateway to the world.
Tony Blair has sent a message of support and we are planning to have his wife Cherie Booth there to welcome Christopher Reeve.
Once Manchester was chosen and everyone realised what a lead role the North West of England has played in the progress of assistive technology, the North West Development Agency took a welcome and very practical interest. UMIST itself has a Professor of Assistive Technology, Paul Blenkorn, who has contributed to the admirable accessibility options in Microsoft's Windows and a wealth of learning and accessibility software and devices from RCEVH through to the Sensory Software sold throughout Britain and the United States. Manchester University, Liverpool John Moores University, and Manchester Metropolitan University have all been drivers too. From the early eighties Manchester SEMERC and the Northern ACE Centre have led practitioner development in this field. On the commercial side Manchester based Granada Learning-SEMERC and Oldham based Inclusive Technology are the major UK AT suppliers, but many more companies: BIT 32, Don Johnston Ltd, Atkinson VariTech, Special Access Systems and Brilliant Computing have played, or are still playing a major role. The two major special needs teacher trainers in the recent NOF scheme, Granada Learning SEMERC and ICTS were both North West based.
It was late afternoon. Christopher was ready for us. On the lawn in front of his house he chatted through the conference programme while being photographed with the President of Inclusive TLC, Inc., Janet De Senzo, whose company will bear the brunt of publicising the conference in the United States. Next Trish Hornsey, Managing Director of Inclusive Technology Ltd. who has set aside a substantial mailing budget and catalogue space to promote the conference in the UK.
I watched as he put both women at their ease with quips and stories. He is funny and has a wonderful wry smile. And the clear blue eyes are unmistakably those of Superman.
Martin Littler
22nd July 2003
How we got this far: Many thanks to Luke Bryan; Anna Rourke, Director of ACE North; Betsy Berg and Katie Crawford of the William Morris Agency; Diana De Rosa, Logistics Manager to Mr Reeve; and Laurie Hawkins, Mr Reeve's Assistant. And to Dana and Christopher Reeve too, of course!