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Time Line: The Contributions of Leona and
Marion Fialkowski
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1968 After five years of fighting,
the Fialkowskis organized other parents in a successful attempt
to get the School District of Philadelphia to provide classroom
space and a teacher for severely and profoundly retarded children,
the first in the state of PA.
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1970 Leona Fialkowski testified before
Congress to urge them to pass national legislation guaranteeing
education to all children with disabilities in our nation.
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1973 The Fialkowskis spearheaded the
opening of their own parent-run learning facility at a neighborhood
center.
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1972-1975 After backing the PA PARC
Consent Agreement and opening the doors of PA Public schools
to all mentally retarded children, the Fialkowskis herald
in the passage of the Education of the handicapped Act finally
breaking down the barriers across the nation for the Right
to Education for all handicapped regardless of type or severity
of disabilities.
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1980's Leona served as one of the parent
liaisons and monitors in the Pennhurst Case Master's Office.
She helped provide critical support to people and their families
when they were returned to the community from Pennhurst. Her
role helped insure that Pennhurst Plaintiffs and their families
received proper support. She was relentless in her efforts
to secure quality services for each one of them.
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1978-1982 With a small group of the
parents the Fialkowskis fought in the Federal Courts over
the quality of education for people with disabilities and
to gain "state of the art" education for all public school
special education teachers. The decree in 1982 created the
Urban Model and forced the Philadelphia school system to redesign
programs for severely disabled children. This brought to Philadelphia
the first Life Skills classes, recognized nationally as the
best in the country.
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1989 The Fialkowskis along with another
family went to court to force the state to restore $7.5 million
for services to people with mental retardation living at home
with their families. Their efforts successfully restored those
funds and reopened the doors to programs for hundreds of mentally
retarded adults who had been put out of programs.
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1990 The Fialkowskis went to court
to try to establish standards of care for people with mental
retardation living in community group homes. They did this
after losing one of their beloved sons in a choking incident
in a group home.
A message from Leona excerpted 'From My Heart'
"We are nearing the turn of the century.
Simple advancement of the clock does not mean that everything becomes
'right with the world' - it only means that we have gone the first
lap in the relay. There is still tremendous need for improvement.
There are still long waiting lists, inadequate programs, lack of
funding, and too few skilled resources. The torch must be carried
by the parents of the younger generation. The tools I give them
to overcome their obstacles are the following: never-ending hope,
perseverance, and the unequivocal belief that all people are created
equal."
Obituary
Leona Fialkowski, 72, activist for disabled
(reprinted from The Philadelphia Inquirer, Friday November 1, 1996)
By Andy Wallace Inquirer Staff Writer
Leona Fialkowski, 72, of Bridesburg, whose
34 year battle on behalf of severely handicapped people brought
changes in their lives and in the laws regarding them, died Monday
of a stroke following open heart surgery at Allegheny University
Hospitals, Center City.
"She was a pioneer," said Audrey Coccia,
a friend who considered Mrs. Fialkowski a mentor and a visionary.
"She didn't succumb to society's norm that [the severely handicapped]
needed to be put away in institutions."
Mrs. Fialkowski who had 10 children, raised
her two severely handicapped sons Walter and David at home. In the
1960's she began her struggle to gain for them the right to an education
and quality care, and the recognition of their civil rights.
"The heart and sum of it is that Leona and
her husband, Marion, built and changed enormously the institutions
for severely disabled children and adults," said Thomas K. Gilhool,
former state secretary of education and a close friend. Their work,
he said, "is without parallel anywhere in the country."
Over the last three decades, he said, she
was the "inspiration, the driver and the implementer of these very
profound changes in how society gauges severely disabled people."
In the late 1960's, Mrs. Fialkowski single-handedly prodded the
Philadelphia Board of Education to establish school programs for
severely disabled children at a time when those children were excluded
from public education by law, he said.
Although she was not a part to the case,
she inspired a landmark 1972 federal court case that established
the right of disabled children to a free public education, Gilhool
said. And when Congress was considering legislation guaranteeing
an education to all handicapped children in the country, in the
early 1970's, she was there to testify. The legislation passed in
1975. She went to court in the mid-70's over the quality of education
her sons were getting.
The battle ended in 1982 , and again she
won. In the settlement worked out in the Third U.S. Circuit Court
of Appeals, the School District of Philadelphia was compelled to
implement a program that would teach disabled children skills that
would help them get jobs, care for themselves and function in the
community. "It resulted in a decree causing Philadelphia to redesign
programs for severely disabled children and to retrain teachers
to teach all disabled children," Gilhool said. "By the mid-1980s,
the Philadelphia program … was recognized nationally as the best
in the country," he said. "She drove that [case] from beginning
to end."
In addition to major battles over rights,
Mrs. Fialkowski fought a number of skirmishes - over money, for
example. In 1989, she was one of the two parents who went to court
to force the state to restore $7.5 million for services to mentally
retarded people who were cared for at home.
At that time, Mrs. Fialkowski was 66, had
suffered two strokes and was looking after her husband who was suffering
from cancer and a dislocated disc. He died in March 1994. Even then,
she would not place her son David in an institution. His older brother
Walter had choked to death on a sandwich in 1986 in a community-living
program in the Northeast.
Mrs. Fialkowski began working for the disabled
when her last two sons were born with cerebral palsy. "She felt
they had the same rights as individuals as other people and she
dedicated her life in pursuit of that," said her daughter Kathryn
Caldwell. She was successful because "she never gave up," Caldwell
said. "She didn't believe anybody in any authority was any better,
and she went head to head with anybody in any job at any level -
in education, in politics, in business. She fundamentally didn't
believe in any kind of discrimination."
Mrs. Fialkowski's work was not only on behalf
of the disabled --- she felt she was working to help people who
were not handicapped as well, her daughter said. "She felt good
about educating people about tolerance and patience. She helped
people who weren't disabled to accept people who were." Mrs. Fialkowski
also didn't stop long enough to count her accomplishments. "She
felt her work wasn't done," Caldwell said. One of her newer projects
was CareerNet, a program founded to find jobs and volunteer opportunities
in the community for the disabled so they would not be limited to
working in sheltered workshops.
Surviving are her sons Anthony, Michael,
James and David; daughters Barbara McMillen, Mary Bisignaro, Eileen
Williams, Joan Fialkowski and Kathryn Caldwell; a brother; 20 grandchildren;
and three great grand-children.
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