Hugh Gallagher, author & international advocate, 1933-2004
By Barbara Duncan (bjdnycla@aol.com)
The Washington Post and numerous disability news outlets ran glowing obituaries last month about Hugh Gallagher, who died on July 13, but few mentioned his international activities. A polio survivor, Hugh was perhaps best known for his early work on architectural barriers legislation in the late 1960s and subsequent books and articles focusing on the role of polio in the making of the mettle of a U.S. President, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Former Senate majority leader Bob Dole wrote that, "Hugh's most outstanding contribution to the quality of life of people with disabilities was to successfully place disability on the agenda of the Congress for the first time."
On the international level, he also made a significant impact. In the late 1980s, working as a visiting adjunct fellow of the Center for the Advanced Study of Ethics at Georgetown University, Gallagher became interested in the so-called euthanasia program of Nazi Germany, resulting in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of disabled children and adults. He was given a fellowship through the IDEAS project of the World Institute on Disability and RI to continue his exploration on site in Germany, where he met with researchers and disability rights activists. The result was an influential book, By Trust Betrayed: Patients, Physicians and the License to Kill in the Third Reich, published in 1990 and in revised edition in 1995. He then worked closely with the Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C. to ensure that their exhibits and conferences included disabled victims as an important aspect of its educational outreach.
In 2001 and 2002 Hugh worked again with RI & WID to train disabled Russians in the fine points of advocacy work, and giving a keynote speech in October 2002 to Moscow's first disability film festival and workshops on how to improve mass communications on disability issues. He told us in Russia that one of his proudest achievements was that the U.S. Embassy in Moscow had agreed to underwrite his trip as an accomplished American author. The Embassy made good use of him, but for every two-hour lecture he gave, he spent at least three hours awaiting accessible transport. True to form, and form was important to Hugh, he never complained, reminding his handlers that for most of his life, accessible transport had been but a dream.
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