1. Between 1946 and 1953, an average of 1,638,000 veterans received compensation from the federal government for a service-connected disability of at least 10 percent. Two-thirds had a physical or sensory impairment, one-third had a neuropsychiatric impairment, and a small fraction had tuberculosis. Approximately 260,000 disabled veterans drew on Public Law 16. Administrator of Veterans’ Affairs, Annual Report for Fiscal Year Ending June 30, 1953 (Washington, D.C., 1953), 202–3 (hereafter VA Annual Report); Rusk, Howard A., “Hope for Our Disabled Millions,” New York Times, 27 January 1946.Google Scholar

2. Ronald L. Graffouliere, report on 24 July 1947 meeting, and Edward L. Morris to Dean C. M. Louttit, 6 December 1948, RG 49/1/1, box 2, University of Illinois Archives (hereafter UIA). This article draws on the papers of President George Stoddard, Provost Coleman Griffith, and the University of Illinois–Galesburg division at the University of Illinois Archives; the vocational rehabilitation files at the Illinois State Archives; Governor Adlai Stevenson’s papers at the Illinois State Historical Library; and newspapers from Urbana, Galesburg, Chicago, Springfield, and Los Angeles.

3. Canaday, Margot, “Building a Straight State: Sexuality and Social Citizenship Under the 1944 G.I. Bill,” Journal of American History 90 (December 2003): 935–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar For general accounts, see Olson, Keith W., The G.I. Bill, the Veterans, and the Colleges (Lexington, 1974)Google Scholar; Ross, David R. B., Preparing for Ulysses: Politics and Veterans During World War II (New York, 1969)Google Scholar; Gambone, Michael D., The Greatest Generation Comes Home: The Veteran in American Society (College Station, Tex., 2005)Google Scholar; Altschuler, Glenn C. and Blumin, Stuart M., The G.I. Bill: A New Deal for Veterans (Oxford, 2009)Google Scholar; Mettler, Suzanne, Soldiers to Citizens: The G.I. Bill and the Making of the Greatest Generation (Oxford, 2005)Google Scholar; Frydl, Kathleen J., The G.I. Bill (Cambridge, 2009).Google Scholar

4. On racially-based exclusions, see David H. Onkst, “‘First a Negro . . . Incidentally a Veteran’: Black World War Two Veterans and the G.I. Bill of Rights in the Deep South, 1944–1948,” Journal of Social History 31, no. 3 (1998): 517–44; Sarah E. Turner and John Bound, “Closing the Gap of Widening the Divide: The Effects of the G.I. Bill and World War II on the Educational Outcomes of Black Americans,” National Bureau of Economic Research, Working Paper W9044 (2002). Suzanne Mettler and Kathleen Frydl argue, in contrast, that the G.I. bill was “relatively inclusive” for African American veterans. See Mettler, Soldiers to Citizens, 54–57, 136–44; Frydl, The G.I. Bill, chap. 5 passim.

5. O’Brien, Ruth, Crippled Justice: The History of Modern Disability Policy in the Workplace (Chicago, 2001)Google Scholar; Gerber, David A., “Heroes and Misfits: The Troubled Social Reintegration of Disabled Veterans in The Best Years of Our Lives” and “Introduction: Finding Disabled Veterans in History,” in Disabled Veterans in History, ed. Gerber, David (Ann Arbor, 2001), 1–51, 70–95Google Scholar; Serlin, David, Replaceable You: Engineering the Body in Postwar America (Chicago, 2004), chap. 1 passimGoogle Scholar; Rose, Sarah, “Teaching Blind People to Walk by Taking Away Their Canes: The Influence of World War II on Conceptions of Disability in the United States” (M.A. thesis, University of Chicago, 2001)Google Scholar.

6. In essence, these activists were outlining the “social model of disability.” The medical model of disability understands it as the result of an individual’s pathological deviance from the norm. The social model, in contrast, defines disability as a social construction. In essence, disability is produced not by biological impairments but instead by the way that social attitudes and the physical environment interact with impairments. Davis, Lennard J., “Constructing Normalcy,” in The Disability Studies Reader, ed. Davis, Lennard J. (New York, 1997), 9–28Google Scholar; Longmore, Paul K. and Umansky, Lauri, “Introduction: Disability History: From the Margins to the Mainstream,” in The New in Disability History: American Perspectives, ed. Longmore, Paul K. and Umansky, Lauri (New York, 2001), 7–8.Google Scholar

7. Although the disability rights and deinstitutionalization movements have traditionally been dated to the 1960s and 1970s, scholars have recently begun to uncover a much earlier history of disability activism. Scotch, Richard K., From Good Will to Civil Rights: Transforming Federal Disability Policy, 2nd ed. (Philadelphia, 2001)Google Scholar; Fleischer, Doris Zames and Zames, Frieda, The Disability Rights Movement: From Charity to Confrontation (Philadelphia, 2001)Google Scholar; Longmore, Paul K. and Goldberger, David, “The League of the Physically Handicapped and the Great Depression: A Case Study in the New Disability History,” Journal of American History 87, no. 3 (December 2000): 888–922CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Audra Jennings, “‘The greatest numbers . . . will be wage earners’: Organized Labor and Disability Activism, 1945–1953,” Labor: Studies in the Working-Class History of the Americas 4, no. 4 (Winter 2007): 55–82.

8. Veterans who had served for ninety days received one year of educational funding plus one extra month for every additional month of service. Olson, The G.I. Bill, the Veterans, and the Colleges, 17–18; Altschuler and Blumin, The G.I. Bill, 68–71, 82.

9. All in all, 7.8 million veterans took advantage of the educational provisions of the G.I. Bill; 2.2 million used it for higher education. Olson, Keith, “The G.I. Bill and Higher Education: Success and Surprise,” American Quarterly 25, no. 5 (1973): 596–610.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

10. Veterans with disabilities unrelated to their wartime service could draw on either the G.I. Bill or the civilian vocational rehabilitation program expanded by the Vocational Rehabilitation Act Amendments of 1943. In both cases, they received far less government aid than those covered under Public Law 16. Additionally, veterans could not switch from the G.I. Bill to Public Law 16. C. Obermann, Esco, A History of Vocational Rehabilitation in America (Minneapolis, 1967), 180–82Google Scholar; Turmusani, Majid, “Work and Adulthood: Economic Survival in the Majority World,” in Disability and the Life Course: Global Perspectives, ed. Priestley, Mark (Cambridge, 2001), 195.Google Scholar

11. VA Annual Report for 1945, 17–18.

12. Obermann, A History of Vocational Rehabilitation in America, 194.

13. Ibid., 180–82, 190; Frydl, The G.I. Bill, 96–98, 319–20; Olson, The G.I. Bill, the Veterans, and the Colleges, 8–9.

14. For more on these developments, see Rose, Sarah, “No Right to Be Idle: The Invention of Disability, 1850–1930” (Ph.D. diss., University of Illinois at Chicago, 2008)Google Scholar; Longmore and Umansky, “Disability History: From the Margins to the Mainstream,” 22.

15. O’Brien, Crippled Justice, 3–5, 14–18; Stone, Deborah A., The Disabled State (Philadelphia, 1984), 1–5, 15–25CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Berkowitz, Edward D., Disabled Policy: America’s Programs for the Handicapped (Cambridge, 1987).Google Scholar

16. Fabian Witt, John, The Accidental Republic: Crippled Workingmen, Destitute Widows, and the Remaking of American Law (Cambridge, Mass., 2004), 130.Google Scholar

17. Mangold, George B., “Untitled,” in Federal Board for Vocational Education, Proceedings of the First National Conference (Washington, D.C., 1922), 67.Google Scholar

18. See, for instance, Witt, The Accidental Republic, 130; Walter Hickel, K., “Medicine, Bureaucracy, and Social Welfare: The Politics of Disability Compensation for American Veterans of World War I,” in The New Disability History: American Perspectives, ed. Longmore, Paul K. and Umansky, Lauri (New York, 2001), 260Google Scholar; Clark, Claudia, Radium Girls: Women and Industrial Health Reform, 1910–1935 (Chapel Hill, 1997).Google Scholar

19. Gerber, “Finding Disabled Veterans in History,” 5–6, 10–11; Hickel, “Medicine, Bureaucracy, and Social Welfare,” 238–47.

20. Rose, “Teaching Blind People to Walk,” 65–81; Gerber, David A., “In Search of Al Schmid: War Hero, Blinded Veteran, Everyman,” in The Body and Physical Difference: Discourses of Disability, ed. Mitchell, David T. and Snyder, Sharon L. (Ann Arbor, 1997), 118.Google Scholar

21. See Sarah Rose, “No Right to Be Idle,” ch. 6 passim, and Byrom, Brad, “A Pupil and a Patient: Hospital-Schools in Progressive America,” in The New Disability History: American Perspectives, ed. Longmore, Paul K. and Umansky, Lauri (New York, 2001), 133–56.Google Scholar

22. Skocpol, Theda, Protecting Soldiers and Mothers: The Political Origins of Social Policy in the United States (Cambridge, Mass., 1992), 110.Google Scholar The War Risk Insurance Act of 1917 promised vocational rehabilitation to disabled veterans of World War I, and the Soldier Rehabilitation Act of 1918 established a vocational rehabilitation program under the Federal Board for Vocational Education. The Smith-Fess Act of 1920 (also known as the Civilian Vocational Rehabilitation Act) created a small joint federal-state rehabilitation program for civilians through the Federal Board for Vocational Education.

23. Federal Board for Vocational Education, Annual Report of the Federal Board for Vocational Education, vol. 2 (Washington, D.C., 1919), 9.Google Scholar

24. Despite all the high hopes for vocational rehabilitation, its formal start in the United States was not promising; for veterans of the Great War, it was “a near disaster.” The situation was little better for civilians. Only 12,000 civilians with work injuries received rehabilitation between 1920 and 1943 (at a time when 250,000 people were permanently disabled each year), and people who had congenital or nonindustrial disabilities were ineligible. Ross, Preparing for Ulysses, 26–29; Obermann, A History of Vocational Rehabilitation in America, 155; O’Brien, 65; Rose, “No Right to Be Idle,” chap. 7 passim; Hickel, “Medicine, Bureaucracy, and Social Welfare,” 236–65.

25. O’Brien, Crippled Justice, 6–9, 27–78; Scotch, From Good Will to Civil Rights, 375–90.

26. James Bond to G. E. Giesecke, 24 December 1946, and G. E. Giesecke to James Bond, 30 December 1946 and 2 January 1947, RG 49/1/1, box 3, UIA; Galesburg was located in the former Mayo Army General Hospital. Louttit, C. M., Habberton, W., McCrimmon, J. M., Open Door to Education: Galesburg Undergraduate Division, University of Illinois, 1946–1949 (Urbana, 1949), 4–5Google Scholar; Brown, Steven E., “Breaking Barriers: The Pioneering Disability Students Services Program at the University of Illinois, 1948–1960,” in The History of Discrimination in U.S. Education: Marginality, Agency, and Power, ed. Tamura, Eileen H. (New York, 2008), 169.Google Scholar

27. Wm. P. Kleuskens to G. D. Stoddard, 28 April 1947, and George D. Stoddard to Wm. P. Kleuskens, 13 May 1947, RG 2/10/1, box 16, UIA; Louttit et al., 23–24.

28. Edward Potthoff to C. R. Griffith, 7 May 1947, and Coleman R. Griffith to Wm. P. Kleuskens, 9 June 1947, RG 5/1/1, box 17, UIA; Stoddard to Kleuskens, 13 May 1947.

29. In the late 1940s, Illinois’s mental health system was one of the most overcrowded in the country. “The Emergency Educational Program of the University of Illinois,” RG 49/1/1, box 2; Dwight H. Green to George D. Stoddard, 5 September 1946, RG 2/10/1, box 5, UIA. Department of Public Welfare, hearing by the Budgetary Commission (Proposed Budget for 66th Biennium), 14 December 1948, Room 309, State House, Series II, box 24, folder 42, Illinois State Historical Library.

30. “Use of Mayo General Hospital for Proposed Undergraduate Branch at Galesburg,” 19 September 1946, RG 2/10/1, box 5, UIA.

31. Griffith to Kleuskens, 9 June 1947.

32. Susan Schwartzenberg, Becoming Citizens: Family Life and the Politics of Disability (Seattle, 2005), 35-77; O’Brien, Crippled Justice, 111.

33. Little, Jan, If It Weren’t for the Honor—I’d Rather Have Walked: Previously Untold Tales of the Journey to the ADA (Cambridge, Mass., 1996), 10, 14.Google Scholar

34. Ibid., 15–17.

35. Mary Lou Breslin, “Cofounder and Director of the Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund, Movement Strategist,” an oral history conducted in 1996–98 by Susan O’Hara, Regional Oral History Office, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, 2000, 43 (hereafter Breslin oral history), http://content.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/kt8r29n9sp/ (accessed 9 October 2010).

36. Trent, James W. Jr., Inventing the Feeble Mind: A History of Mental Retardation in the United States (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1994), 2–5, 10–11Google Scholar; Schwartzenberg, Becoming Citizens, 5–32. This exclusion represented a departure from the relative integration of the nineteenth century. See Penny Richards, L. and Singer, George H. S., “‘To Draw Out the Effort of His Mind’: Educating a Child with Mental Retardation in the Early Nineteenth-Century South,”Journal of Special Education 31, no. 4 (Winter 1998): 443–66Google Scholar; Williams-Searle, John, “Cold Charity: Manhood, Brotherhood, and the Transformation of Disability, 1870–1900,” in The New Disability History: American Perspectives, ed. Longmore, Paul K. and Umansky, Lauri (New York, 2001), 157–86Google Scholar; Rose, “No Right to Be Idle,” chap. 4 passim.

37. Some disabled people found work in sheltered workshops, which maintained their isolation from the broader community (and rarely paid enough to allow them to support themselves). Longmore and Goldberger, “The League of the Physically Handicapped”; Rose, “Teaching Blind People to Walk,” 28–47; Sarah F. Rose, “‘Crippled’ Hands: Disability in Labor and Working-Class History,” Labor: Studies in Working-Class History of the Americas 2, no. 1 (2005): 27-54.

38. Mary Tremblay, “Going Back to Civvy Street: A Historical Account of the Impact of the Everest and Jennings Wheelchair for Canadian World War II Veterans with Spinal Cord Injury,” Disability & Society 11, no. 2 (June 1996): 151.

39. Little, If It Weren’t for the Honor—I’d Rather Have Walked, 10. These attitudes also reflected the so-called ugly laws passed by many cities (and some states) in the late nineteenth century; these law barred “diseased, maimed, and deformed people” from public spaces. The polio epidemics of the late 1940s likely also made the sight of a person in a wheelchair a fearsome reminder of Americans’ vulnerability to the virus. Schweik, Susan M., The Ugly Laws: Disability in Public (New York, 2009)Google Scholar; Wilson, Daniel J., Living with Polio: The Epidemic and Its Survivors (Chicago, 2005).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

40. Timothy J. Nugent, “Founder of the University of Illinois Disabled Students Program and the National Wheelchair Basketball Association, Pioneer in Architectural Access,” oral history conducted by Fred Pelka, 2004–5, Regional Oral History Office, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, 2009, 61 (hereafter Nugent oral history), http://digitalassets.lib.berkeley.edu/roho/ucb/text/nugent_timothy.pdf (accessed 9 October 2010).

41. Porter, Roy, The Greatest Benefit to Mankind: A Medical History of Humanity (New York, 1997), 452–61Google Scholar; Tremblay, “Going Back to Civvy Street,” 151–52.

42. Tremblay, “Going Back to Civvy Street,” 153–54; Fleischer and Zames, The Disability Rights Movement, 173.

43. Tremblay, “Going Back to Civvy Street,” 154–56, 165; Brian Woods and Nicholas Watson, “The Social and Technological History of Wheelchairs,” International Journal of Therapy and Rehabilitation 11, no. 9 (September 2004): 407–8.

44. Norval D. Hodges to C. R. Griffith, 21 July 1947, RG 5/1/1, box 17; Ronald L. Graffouliere, report on 24 July 1947 meeting, RG 49/1/1, box 2; Norval D. Hodges, “Memorandum: Galesburg Branch and Disabled Veterans,” RG 5/1/1, box 22, UIA.

45. Graffouliere, report on 24 July 1947 meeting.

46. Hodges to Griffith, 21 July 1947.

47. Graffouliere, report on 24 July 1947 meeting; Morris to Louttit, 6 December 1948.

48. Homer G. Bradney, “Special Training for Severely Disabled” (memorandum sent to all Illinois Veterans’ Commission field officers), 28 July 1947, RG 49/1/1, box 2, UIA; Hodges, “Memorandum,” 30 July 1947.

49. “University of Illinois, Galesburg Undergraduate Division, Galesburg, Illinois, 1947–1948” and “Galesburg Division Catalog, 1947–1948,” RG 49/1/1, box 2; “University of Illinois, Galesburg Undergraduate Division, Galesburg, Illinois, 1948–1949” and “Galesburg Division Catalog, 1948–1949,” RG 49/1/1, box 3, UIA.

50. Longmore and Umansky, “Disability History,” 6–7.

51. Nugent oral history, 62.

52. “Disabled War Vets Attend Galesburg U of I,” Illinois Mobilizes for Its Veterans, November–December 1948, 6.

53. M. J. Galbraith to C. M. Louttit, 21 June 1948, RG 2/10/1, box 16, UIA.

54. Norval D. Hodges to Coleman R. Griffith, 12 August 1947, RG 2/10/1, box 16; C. E. Hostetler to Coleman R. Griffith, 10 September 1947, RG 5/1/1, box 22, UIA; Hodges, “Memorandum,” 30 July 1947.

55. Turmusani, “Work and Adulthood,” 195; Obermann, A History of Vocational Rehabilitation in America, 180–82.

56. Galesburg’s enrollment never reached the maximum of 2,000 students. Only 1,700 students attended in fall 1947, after more than a year of publicity. By fall 1949, enrollment had dropped to 1,079. Louttit et al., 23–24.

57. Nugent intended to write his dissertation on the program. Nugent oral history, 17.

58. Ibid., 2–5, 7, 8–10.

59. Ibid., 14.

60. Galbraith to Louttit, 21 June 1948.

61. C. M. Louttit to George Stoddard, 25 June 1948, and George Stoddard to C. M. Louttit, 4 July 1948, RG 2/10/1, box 16, UIA.

62. C. M. Louttit to Morton A. Seidenfeld (National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis), 7 July 1948; Louttit to Lawrence Linck (National Society for Crippled Children and Adults), 7 July 1948; Louttit to Michael J. Shortley (Federal Office of Vocational Rehabilitation), 7 July 1948; Louttit to E. C. Cline (Illinois Division of Vocational Rehabilitation), 17 July 1948, all from RG 49/1/1, box 2, UIA.

63. Chauncey Louttit to George Stoddard, 14 September 1948, and George Stoddard to C. M. Louttit, 18 September 1948, RG 2/10/1, box 26; Norval Hodges to Wilbur Schramm, 17 August 1948, RG 49/1/1, box 3, UIA.

64. “Memorandum: Training Facilities for Seriously Handicapped Veterans,” 2 August 1948; G. Art Sackenruther to W. J. English, 19 August 1948; William J. English to G. Art Sackenruther, 23 August 1948; and G. E. Giesecke to Veterans Administration Regional Office, all from RG 49/9/5, box 4. L. O. Kerwood to C. M. Louttit, 16, 17, and 27 August and 11 September 1948, all from RG 49/1/1, box 2; G. E. Giesecke to Henry Davis, RG 49/1/1, box 3; C. M. Louttit to Coleman Griffith, 26 October 1948, RG 5/1/1, box 17, all from UIA; Nugent oral history, 33.

65. Press Release, 29 April 1948, RG 49/1/1, box 2, UIA; Louttit to Stoddard, 25 June 1948; and Stoddard to Louttit, 4 July 1948.

66. Wilbur Schramm to George Stoddard and Coleman Griffith, 9 September 1948, RG 2/10/1, box 16; “Press Release, 11/48,” RG 49/1/1, box 3, UIA; “Disabled War Vets Attend Galesburg U of I.”

67. Louttit to Griffith, 26 October 1948.

68. “Rehab Program Aids Vets,” Galesburg Illini, 17 December 1948, 2. Students were primarily covered by Public Law 16; a few drew on the G.I. Bill or the state rehabilitation program. Ronald L. Graffouliere to Floyd Siewert, 26 October 1948, RG 49/1/1, box 2, UIA; Nugent oral history, 26, 29.

69. Nugent oral history, 110.

70. Ibid., 20.

71. Ibid., 18–19.

72. Paraplegic veterans developed wheelchair basketball at VA hospitals in the mid-1940s. Minutes of the First National Wheelchair Basketball Tournament, Galesburg, Illinois, 1–3 April 1949, RG 49/1/1, box 3, UIA; Nugent oral history, 98–99.

73. George Stoddard to Adlai Stevenson, 26 February 1949, and Record of telephone conversation between Mr. English and Mr. Morey, 25 February 1949, RG 5/1/1, box 17, UIA; Press Release, 29 April 1948.

74. Trent, Inventing the Feeble Mind, 227–30; Busch, Noel F., Adlai Stevenson of Illinois: A Portrait (New York, 1952), 101.Google Scholar

75. Stoddard to Stevenson, 26 February 1949; Press Release, 2 March 1949, RG 49/1/1, box 2, UIA.

76. Minutes of Staff Meeting, 21 March 1949, RG 5/1/1, box 17; Statement for the Press from George D. Stoddard, 23 March 1949, RG 2/10/1, box 26, UIA.

77. Nugent noted that the able-bodied students “were very supportive of us because they felt that we were the one weapon that could keep the campus open. . . . [They] were behind us 110 percent.” Nugent oral history, 47–48.

78. Many of the city police were veterans themselves and were sympathetic to Nugent’s cause. Ibid., 46.

79. “Wheelchair Vets Trek to Springfield in Effort to Keep Division Open,” Galesburg Illini, 25 March 1949: 1; Nugent oral history, 49.

80. Nugent oral history, 18, 48–49.

81. “Wheelchair Vets Trek to Springfield,” 1.

82. Nugent oral history, 24.

83. See, for instance, Ronald L. Graffouliere to Robert D. Bone, 28 September 1948; Byron H. Atkinson to R. L. Graffouliere, 8 December 1948; L. B. Ducky to Ronald L. Graffouliere, 17 December 1948; and Leonard G. Nystrom to Ronald L. Graffouliere, 1 March 1949; all from RG 49/1/1, box 3, UIA.

84. R. G. Bone to Coleman R. Griffith, “Increased Paraplegic Enrollment on the Urbana-Champaign Campus,” October 1949, RG 5/1/1, box 20, UIA.

85. Bone to Griffith, October 1949.

86. Brown, “Breaking Barriers,” 171.

87. H. L. Lawder to Coleman R. Griffith, 23 April 1949, RG 5/1/1, box 20, UIA; Brown, “Breaking Barriers,” 172; Nugent oral history, 49.

88. Brown, “Breaking Barriers,” 172; Nugent oral history, 26.

89. Information packet on paraplegic students for Provost Griffith, 26 April 1949, RG 5/1/1, box 20, UIA.

90. The spring 1949 enrollment constituted a 57 percent increase over 1942’s enrollment of 11,294. Nugent funded his salary and the program with contracts from the Illinois Department of Vocational Rehabilitation and the VA until 1956. Ronald Graffouliere to Wayne Krebs, 23 May 1949, RG 49/1/1, box 3, UIA; “College Rolls Show 9½ Pct. Slump in Year,” Chicago Tribune, 22 December 1942, 16; “23,576 Enrolled at U. of Illinois for Second Term,” Chicago Tribune, 13 February 1949: 16; Nugent oral history, 25.

91. Press Release from Galesburg administration, 4 May 1949, and H. L. Lawder to C. M. Louttit, 31 May 1949, RG 49/1/1, box 2; Coleman R. Griffith to George Stoddard, 1 November 1949, RG 5/1/1, box 20, UIA.

92. Scharper died in July 1950, just after completing his first year at the Urbana-Champaign campus. Bone to Griffith, October 1949; Nugent oral history, 51–52.

93. Griffith to Stoddard, 1 November 1949; Nugent oral history, 35.

94. By the end of the 1963–64 school year, 307 students had completed their degrees and more than 1,000 students with disabilities had taken classes at the University of Illinois. Nugent estimated that the population in the first ten to fifteen years was 65 percent veteran (funded primarily by Public Law 16) and 35 percent civilian; many of the latter had polio-induced paralysis. Brown, “Breaking Barriers,” 171, 184, 186; Nugent oral history, 65.

95. Nugent oral history, 54–58, 60; Expanding Horizons: A History of the First 50 Years of the Division of Rehabilitation-Education Services at the University of Illinois (Champaign, 1998), 14; Brown, “Breaking Barriers,” 173, 179, 183.

96. Timothy J. Nugent to Laura Borwell, 6 December 1954, RG 39/1/1, box 32, UIA, quoted in Brown, “Breaking Barriers,” 174.

97. Breslin oral history, 43.

98. Strom, Ralph J., The Disabled College Veteran of World War II (Washington, D.C., 1950), 3–4.Google Scholar

99. UCLA was one of the rare exceptions; it began admitting paraplegic veterans from the VA hospital in Van Nuys in 1948 and later developed a program for disabled students. But the campus was not very accessible during the first few years and the program was not widely known during the 1950s or 1960s. Madaus, Joseph W., “Services for College and University Students with Disabilities: A Historical Perspective,” Journal of Postsecondary Education and Disability 14, no. 1 (Summer 2000): 6–8Google Scholar; Strom, The Disabled College Veteran of World War II, 39; “UCLA Paraplegics Build for Future,” Los Angeles Times, 16 December 1951, A5.

100. Wilson, Living with Polio, 190.

101. Strom, The Disabled College Veteran of World War II, 44–45.

102. Nugent oral history, 75.

103. Brown, “Breaking Barriers,” 185–86; Expanding Horizons, 25; Nugent oral history, 138, 158.

104. Brown, “Breaking Barriers,” 185.

105. Breslin oral history, 45–46, 54; Little, If It Weren’t for the Honor—I’d Rather Have Walked, 19–20; Brown, “Breaking Barriers,” 180–82.

106. Nugent oral history, 42.

107. Fay oral history, 24; Brown, “Breaking Barriers,” 181; Breslin oral history, 54; Little, If It Weren’t for the Honor—I’d Rather Have Walked, 58–62.

108. In the fall of 2010, the University of Illinois opened Nugent Hall, a new dorm that allows students with severe impairments who rely on personal assistance services to live alongside able-bodied students. Fay oral history, 22–25; Breslin oral history, 48, 54; Nugent oral history, 78; Jodi S. Cohen, “U. of I. Opens State-of-the-Art Dorm for Students with Disabilities,” Chicago Tribune, 18 August 2010, http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2010-08-18/news/ct-met-u-of-i-disability-dorm-20100818_1_dorm-disabilities-students-shower (accessed 9 October 2010).

109. Gambone, The Greatest Generation Comes Home, 124–31, 140–46; Mettler, Soldiers to Citizens, 72–77, 136–43.

110. Shapiro, Joseph P., No Pity: People with Disabilities Forging a New Civil Rights Movement (New York, 1993), 55–58, 64–70, 112–14, 165–66, 211–19Google Scholar; Scotch, From Good Will to Civil Rights, 84–85, 115–16.