Disabled Woman’s Message --Become an Innovator

Terri Peart, 43, of Cypress was perched atop the washing machine when her dog accidentally bumped away the wheelchair that has served as her legs since childhood.

“I just lowered myself to the floor and crawled to it,” she said. “What else was there to do?”

It’s that realistic attitude of self-acceptance and self-esteem that Peart has been passing along to handicapped students in colleges and high schools in her “Free to Be Me” program funded by a grant from area industries and businesses.

“The first thing to do in working with handicapped young people is to get them to accept the fact they’re handicapped,” said Peart, a secretary at Cypress College where she serves on the disabled students advisory committee, “and that the handicap is not going to go away.”

She said handicapped people have to learn their limitations and the only way to learn is to try, such as her climbing atop her washing machine to free the stuck agitator. “We become innovative,” she said, pointing to roses planted close to the patio pavement to permit her to prune them from her wheelchair.

She has received a number of awards for her work, including one from the college district, but she would rather accumulate more understanding from parents who she feels are often overprotective of handicapped children.

“My mother didn’t do that to me,” said Peart, who cleans her own home and does most of the gardening. “When I became handicapped (after an operation), she worked right alongside me. Somehow she knew what had to be done if I was to have a good life.”

Peart said her deceased mother “raised me not as a handicapped child but as a person. I have been a fortunate person because of that. I love life.”

But besides overprotective parents, said Peart, an outspoken advocate for the handicapped as well as a member of the college district affirmative action committee, “there’s an attitude problem with the non-handicapped society, which is looking more at the handicap than the person.,”

She points out that handicapped people, much like those who are not, have many of the same worries: getting a job, a date, falling in love, getting married and having a family.

Before the grueling 11-day Pacific 1000 series of catamaran races stretching from Oxnard to San Diego and including a run to Catalina Island, skipper Stephanie Eliott, 41, of Santa Ana said the “biggest thing is to complete the course.”

Well, she and her two shipmates, Diana Riggs, of Long Beach and Theresa Funaro, of Cerritos came up short. “The wind died on us on the final day with two hours left, and we had to paddle to the Coast Guard station,” said Eliott, mother of two teen-age sons. “Our idea was to finish the race, but not kill ourselves.”

They were the only all-women crew in the race, and for good reason. The boat provided to them was named “Custom Nails.” “Our sponsor (a nail manufacturer) felt an all-girl team would be best for them,” said Eliott, who said the crew will try again next year.

Tustin High School boys’ soccer coach Don Feldman demands attention to schoolwork off the field, and the message came across to his athletes. The team was named Southern Section Team Academic champion of the California Interscholastic Federation with a 3.34 grade-point average.

Next year he has to do something about the sport. His team ended near the cellar.

Some guys never lose their roots, such as Tom Metcalfe, 49, of Fullerton. He has carried on a tight relationship with his native Hoboken, N.J., so much in fact, that the city decided to proclaim “Tom Metcalfe Day.”

Metcalfe, a 25-year veteran of the Fullerton Fire Department, and his brother Jim Metcalfe, 50, a California Highway Patrol officer, have for years been Hoboken’s West Coast “pen pals,” exchanging educational and training information with their New Jersey counterparts.

“The East Coast departments were especially interested in how we do things out here,” said Fire Capt. Metcalfe, who received keys to the city and a proclamation during a ceremony there. In a good will gesture, he gave Hoboken a couple of Fullerton fire and city plaques.

Besides the Metcalfes, Hoboken has other noted natives. “Frank Sinatra was born there,” Tom said.

Acknowledgments--Joan Nunley, 49, Fullerton grandmother of five, was honored by the city for her heroic role in rescuing a disoriented elderly neighbor from his house, which caught fire and was gutted. Nunley, mother of five and an emergency room nurse, said, “You do what you have to do.”