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Michael Scannell, a small-business consultant and past president of the Rotary Club of North Reading, Mass., is a lifelong wheelchair user, and he’s tired of hearing well-meaning people describe someone with a disability as “crippled,” “deformed,” or worse. A proud supporter of Rotary’s fight to end polio, Scannell, who has cerebral palsy, works to raise awareness around language that hurts instead of heals. Recently, Michael was interviewed and is featured in the latest edition of The Rotarian Magazine. Here is the interview for your convenience.
THE ROTARIAN: What was it like growing up using a wheelchair in the ’60s and ’70s?
MICHAEL SCANNELL: The word “cripple” came into my world as a derogatory slur very early. Kids can be so unfair. But they don’t pick up language out of the air. They had to have heard someone else describe me that way, probably their parents: “Oh, it’s that crippled kid from down the street.” Back then, if you saw someone in a wheelchair you were automatically supposed to pity them. Wheelchair equaled nursing home equaled dead.
Instead, my parents had exactly the same expectations for me that they had for my siblings. If you see a curb cut or an elevator in a school, it’s because of my parents and people like them. For example, I was not allowed to go to first grade because the school was not accessible, and there was no law yet that said it had to be. Instead, every day, a local teacher drove to my house and taught me. By second grade, my parents convinced the school that I belonged with the other kids.
My high school was not accessible in any way, either. A teacher had to carry me up two flights of stairs every day. So my father sued the school, and it had to make thousands of dollars’ worth of changes. By the time the renovations were made, I was a sophomore in college, so it wasn’t for me; it was for the next person coming down the line.
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The response to the first Rotary Means Business meeting on November 30th has indicated a strong interest in continuing the development of this new fellowship. The skill builder presented by Andy Winig on Effective Networking Tips and Elevator Speeches was extremely well received. The survey results indicated a strong desire to build a program around mentoring.
