[Headline] Wheelchairbound Denverite credits Wade Blank for corner ramps

[Subheading] Activist helped breach the prison of curbs

[section (?) heading] People

By Greg Lopez

George Roberts was going up Broadway in his motorized wheelchair Wednesday afternoon, explaining why he could go up Broadway in a motorized wheelchair.

It was in 1971 outside the nursing home where Wade Blank was an orderly, and Roberts was a resident with cerebral palsy.

Blank walked. Robert was in a wheelchair with no power. He turned to Blank and said, "Wade, I can't go any farther."

Blank said, "Come on, you can't just quit."

"I'm not quitting, Roberts said. "There's no ramp, and I'm sure as hell not going to ride this wheelchair over a curb. You've got to understand that."

"I'll try, " Blank said.

Blank, 52, the founder of the Atlantis Community and a national handicap rights leader, drowned Monday in Todos Santos, Mexico, trying to save his 8-year-old son, Lincoln. Blank's body was returned Tuesday to Denver, but searchers had not found Lincoln's body.

Roberts is 44 and spent the first 26 years of his life in nursing homes and the Ridge Home for the developmentally disabled. Blank had been a Presbyterian minister in Kent, Ohio, earned a master's degree in the theology of rock music, and came to Denver to work as an orderly.

It makes sense they became friends.

Blank began by organizing fund-raisers at churches to buy Roberts a motorized wheelchair.

He took Roberts to a restaurant for the first time.

When other residents complained somebody was stealing from their rooms, Blank gave Roberts a flashlight and told him to patrol the hallways.

[image]
[image caption] George Roberts, who suffers from cerebral palsy and uses a motorized wheelchair, credits Wade Blank with helping to improve access for disabled Denver residents. Roberts now has a job and lives independently. Glenn Asakawa/Rocky Mountain News

[boxed text] Still Fighting. Disabled activists protest move to reduce nursing home fines/12

[text continues] Two nights later, Roberts shined the flashlight on a man taking a portable radio from a room. The man backed away. Roberts pinned the man against a wall with his wheelchair.

"People didn't think I could do it," Roberts said. "I didn't even think I could do it. I think Wade was the only person who did."

In 1975, Blank started Atlantis. Roberts moved out of the nursing home to work for him. A year later, Roberts, Blank, and 18 others were charged with disobeying an officer for blocking an RTD bus that didn't have a wheelchair lift.

Since then, Roberts has been arrested 36 times in demonstrations for handicap accessibility, and Denver has installed wheelchair lifts on all of its buses and there are ramps at every curb.

Roberts is an inspector for Atlantis, going into businesses and riding buses to make sure everybody else can. He lives in a house with a friend. He takes care of himself.

Blank helped them to get the ramps, and now it is up to Roberts to see how far he can go.

"Wade used to tell me I could do anything I want to do," he said. "He said I didn't need him or anybody to live a good life. Now I've got to prove he was right."

Created on

Wednesday 24 July 2013

Posted on

Wednesday 9 October 2019

Albums

• Wade Blank - Founder of Atlantis Co-Founder of ADAPT

Visits

255

Rating score

no rate

Rate this photo