Lynsie Clott and Larry Clott

00:00 Hi, my name is Lindsey clot. I am 35 years old. Today is Tuesday, July 14th, 2020 and we are in in Moscow, Idaho, and I have a 1 year old daughter and I am also here with my father Larry clott.

00:23 And I'll let him know. I'm here with my daughter Lindsay clot. I'm 71 years old just this year. I started realizing that I'm getting old. What is the date today? And I'm excited by answering these questions.

00:52 All right. Well

00:54 Dad and I were just catching up on life not long ago and talking about my daughter Fiona his granddaughter. She's 1 years old and just starting to walk and it's been making me think a lot about my childhood and growing up here with you and how great my childhood was and just looking back at it. I think some of my Fondest Memories were me sitting on your lap and you Wheeling around the neighborhood with me on your lap and you telling me entertaining me really with stories about your childhood and your life and as a kid, I just was in so much all of that sand.

01:45 Dad is writing a book now about his life just chronicling it not necessary for publication or anything, but he's writing it for myself and Fiona a conversation overview of what of what might be included in your in your book for us until I think this is the opportunity to share orally a little bit off your life for feeling it. Might as well. So I love sharing my life with when you were a child and it took on a double meaning and that when you were born you're very colicky and the only thing that kept you from crying with movement a wheelchair.

02:46 Add so when the crying got two strong we put you on my lap quieting would settle down and we would watch Wheel up the block and it would take us to ours because we looked at every woodpecker and every insect and every tree and it became a habitual because I loved it and I got to be close with my daughter, but she also got used to it and we started telling stories and as a young girl's diaper woke up. What kind of stories and should say. Well what's green. Well, that's about environmental Sorrows fire fire head suspense and started telling stories about where I would start there and she would add on and

03:46 It it was something that we could do it and I always felt like I was doing my part because my wife had her fair share to do she did the house walk around here. And and so it was my time to spend with my daughter. We waited 15 years to have her and so we were well ready to give her all of our time. Yeah. Yeah, it's great. It's so as you mention your 71 years old, which means you're ancient long interesting life and I think she would love to hear more about it. And anyone else is listening to this. Would love to learn more about your life. So in one word Dad, how would you describe your life in one word?

04:40 All my life is just been challenging.

04:46 Another okay sure if I would have used.

04:51 Extraordinary and I think a lot of people would probably say extraordinary life. And so why do you know others don't but when I was 20, I broke my neck in an auto accident and I became a quadriplegic my hands didn't work. My legs didn't work. My feet didn't work my brain worked. And so even the simplest things like holding a cup or glass or writing became something it was extremely hard and end when I went through my Rehabilitation. I was in the hospital. I was in the emergency room and then into intensive care for 2 months and then I was your not rehabilitation hospital and that was for a year and one month.

05:46 And what I was told is that someone in my condition may live a maximum of 15 years, but not the count on it. I didn't live life. Like I only had a maximum of fifteen years left eye. I live when 15 years had come around. That was when your mom got pregnant and we were still thinking of the future and what was going to go on back to the challenging from the time I get up till the time I go to bed and get back up everything I do is a challenge. It's how I'm going to get my glass of water how I'm going to make my own meal how I'm going to get dressed. It's not a case of walking to the mailbox. It's a case of hoping that I don't slip on the ramp and slide off and end up tipping over it's a case of did the mail lady put the mail in and such and Angela Kang.

06:46 Get back out every everything I do that. You can look at it as a challenge and I've done it for so long that the first thing I think of when someone says hey, why don't you stop over? I don't think of what do I have to go through to get there? I think I'm going to get there first and I'll run across everything has an adventure. So I think it's a challenge for you.

07:19 That's one of the things that in my life that makes it easier as I have a lot of friends. I have friends who called they talk. They they come over and my friends don't treat me like I'm some poor person challenged in a wheelchair a physical way. I've done it for so long and I knew that I was more than just a guy in a wheelchair and after after I realize that everyone that I knew didn't treat me any differently if they wanted to go rock climbing if they wanted to go swimming they wanted you know, what I had two things I wanted to do after I broke my neck, and then I thought I'd probably die.

08:17 And the first was to swim in the second was to drive again. I have driven since I was 14 and I own the car from the time. I was fourteen thanks to my father and I had to start over and they didn't have hand controls for cars at that time. So we figured out the farmers often times ad lib that they can controls for things. We went up to a farm that guy made a set of hand controls that I don't know how to explain it but levers overlap and then I was able to pull down for gas and push forward for break and I took my driver's test and they didn't to find shoes that you have I was Winnie.

09:05 One so you're after he broke your neck? Yeah, it was just after I'd left the rehab is in the winter time and it was in a blizzard in North Dakota. When I finally told my alarm control sees he said he had knocked me off points for posture and only one hand on steering wheel control and he didn't know what I was talking about. This is a state patrol and so he said let it roll down this hill and when I tell you put the brakes on and I said how fast and he said I'll tell you we were moving real fast and he said hit the brakes as hard as you can and I did he flew into the dash. The clipboard went into the window. My wife was watching from the courthouse and apparently she said Larry failed, but that was she didn't know the whole story, but but I didn't fail and we run across him.

10:05 Father got stopped for a light out on New Year's Eve 2 months later and he saw the name and he remembered it. So but the other was swimming I guess you go back to that topic. My wife knew that the university has started to go to said they would not offer a swim class for adaptive swimming. We didn't get anyone at the pool that would go in with me. And so my wife new some some lifeguards and she they said what's involved. She said, well, you take him by his arms and his legs and throw him in I guess and so I they did for people he pulled me into the pool and I told them prior. Let me go down to the bottom and see what happens. And so I went to the bottom Pompton came back up and I floated I floated like I was standing my head was on the water.

11:05 And so I could use my arms. So I swam for maybe five years twice a week those were probably yes, and then I came out to Pullman Washington to do grad school and I ran out of time. I was busy student my chair with your humid and we go and I get in the driver seat and my wife by time I got into driver seat. It had Frozen. So then she have to go in with the hair blower and dry it and Fold It Up in half and put it in the car and then we go home and she'd have to take a mouse and dry it to open it up and we both just ran out of time.

11:56 Thinking back on. I think it's a kid, My favorite stories were from you remembering stories about your childhood and to me a lot of them were pretty funny and Musical and adventurous and I think we should maybe have a couple have you talked a little bit about your childhood for for Fiona, but first, let's maybe start

12:24 Wayback can you tell us a little bit about your early life and in North Dakota and what your family was like and why would you stay with ordinary? I grew up in North Dakota. It's cold. It's windy there. It's hot in the summer and a person who knows what it's like usually doesn't Venture there. I didn't know the difference. My family was the fourth white family to have settled in North Dakota. What I say white meaning non Native American they came to North Dakota and they they put in a crop that busted the sod and then they had to find other jobs in the meantime, they struck coal to burn and they sold it to other incoming homesteaders. They rode Pony Express.

13:19 They became postmasters for the area that gets sent to post Masters all of North Dakota. And then on the fifth year of an on-field. He said he made enough that he could go another five years because of the locusts and hurricanes and the hail of the drought that's kind of the background and it's it's a hard working class found information when they came across in a covered wagon since the cover over the wagons eventually became dresses for the girls, but they spent the first their first winter in a covered wagon on the Prairie and they sat around the fire all of the time and one of the towns that they found it is called candy.

14:17 And the guests will we make it through the winter and there was a can do it and look can't donuts and the kid who won won the BET and so they named that place that they settled candy. Candy, North Dakota.

14:37 So you were born where and anyway, I was born in mine and when I came home from the hospital, I came home to a quaint little one-room house a dirt floor no insulation an outhouse in the back no running water and that was because my father had been remarried before and we didn't have credit card. She went to a store like Montgomery Wards or panties and you build credit and they kept The Shoe Box they put your name in there and they wrote items that you bought if your credit was good. They put it on there and they say, you know, you spend $200 or $300 or whatever. Probably not that much his first wife went and maxed out every everyone that he had and he was a man who work three jobs all of the time because you never wanted to be poor again. He he started working full-time when he was 14.

15:36 And help support their family. My father worked as a cab driver at night bus driver during the day and worked out a warehouse in the old days. He was a trucker at sometimes and he would take his tips from the cab to buy formula for me to have while I lived in this little house. He was never there. So my grandma came in so that that first winter I could sleep between my mom and my grandmother to keep me warm because there was no insulation and there was a pot-bellied stove, but that was it and then the following year we moved to

16:19 A modern house a little house on the hill take that it was a big lot in it for houses kind of randomly position and we lived there for about three years and each time my dad and proved it by Building a garage or adding a fence or putting in the driveway that they would raise the rent by God. I'm going to get out of here and get my own land and the cheapest land was out of the country. So he bought part of a pastor as it was being developed and it was the second to the last Street in town and that we had I had a new house we started in the basement. My dad had me wherever you went. I was with it. If if nothing else I was holding the board or marking the board or helping cut the board or pounding nails.

17:19 How old are you then I was we started when I was four by learn how to pound nails when I was too and that my dad got me a block put it in the basement and got me a cancel nails and my mom during the day to put me downstairs and say, you know, you can file nails and one day I decided the block was full up stairs steps going up and then I couldn't walk up the stairs. So I called my mom and she came running and Steph has came down the stairs that house had a coal-burning still wish I would have told him through the coal Chute and then my back then you never locked doors. You never needed your keys, really? And so every time my mom would lock the door and they would leave the keys would be locked inside. So they would

18:14 They would lift me through the coal Chute dead dark. I would wander around the coal Gideon unlock the door and come around. I was never afraid of the dark and growing up. I just remember my mom saying keep the lights off because they cost money to heat down it cost money. And so in this new house my grandmother bought us a television and when I was I guess I would be about four and a half every night at about 10. They would quit working on the house and go drive around get ideas on what how to fix up their house in base decided one night if there was an open spot right by this bar that was across the street. They were going to have a cold bar cold beer and I was asleep in the back window of old car and I looked inside there and I saw them there and they didn't come out then come out. I knew where I was so I walked home and I didn't

19:14 Turn lights on in wasting the energy I went downstairs and turn the TV on and I put a blanket over the front so it wouldn't show a lot of light cuz four-year-old thinks that's where the energies going. And anyway, they didn't come home didn't come home and then I heard some shuffling and then they had to hear anything and then I heard of guy come in saying that he was a police officer. If I was there to please say something and I did and what I didn't know is that they were getting ready to to drag the river the police have. How all the people in the bar with ground looking for and they said why didn't you turn the lights on?

19:58 Why were you watching TV? I said nobody was here. So I watch TV and we had one channel and it was so fuzzy that look like just a screen but the darkness was never a problem for me and I'm growing up there. I had friends in every house every house that was built at 56 kids. I was alone. I was the only kid what I didn't know if my mom and dad were trying to have kids. Everybody was trying to be part of this the new wave of families that had some money and they weren't having any kids. That's a little kid. I didn't know that she was having miscarriages.

20:47 So when I was 10, she finally had a child that lived and I remember at all these different stages. They say are you ready to be a brother? Yes, I want a brother and a sister and all of a sudden they said are you ready? And I said no I decided I don't want one now. I'm 10 and I are friends. I'm playing sports and fishing and running and swimming and all these things than they said. Well, we're having a baby.

21:20 And so anyway, Mike my father my father was it if I could be half of what my father was I would say I have accomplished something his beloved by the town. I know that everybody knew it was it was down about fifty thousand but wherever we want some of those hasedoki who's at me to I don't know but I grew up on Saturdays you got up at 8 and dad and I are together would make bacon and eggs and hot cereal and all of that. We have a good meal and then we take off. What are we going to do with this lady's house?

22:09 And I just trickle down there was 10 stops. We would do something landscaper. And I'd say how did you know that they needed it done. Well, so and so's told so and so and and this is what we do on Saturdays we volunteer and go help him and I said, why do we help him? And he said well we do it cuz it needs to be done. But he said they may help would help us someday. Yeah part of his confidence was said nobody ever thought he needed help.

22:43 Because he was he just seemed it be always together and later in his life when he needed help. He didn't get a lot of help but I grew up with that with that mentality in and I've gotten a lot of help people have said

23:00 You do so much for so many people and I would think you would need more done for you than them, but I get more reward out of helping someone else and my mother was quite the opposite that was a waste of time. They didn't ask you you're using my time. You've got better things to do and she kind of went through her whole life that way when my brother was born and she start imagining that her husband was having an affair and her child is lying and stealing at all these things that weren't happening and I started moving away away or pushing away. Whatever you're young kidding. You're proud you're impressing up to that point. We were best of friends and you're trying to impress them and it it just got to be the point where

24:00 I didn't want to tell her anything because she'd always turn it around on me and my dad he was he was the only kid in high school had a car for example, and at the reunions they told story about that. He repainted the car every time you got a different girlfriend, but you painted it with a paintbrush and he said when your 14 if if you pass the driver's test you can get a license and if you can afford a car you can buy one. I bought an old clunker and together we put it together and we fixed it up and it was more time together. But my father always said I'm going to take Larry with I'm going to take take Larry and we're going to do this and we go out and work on the car or when I was 7 years old. He found me a shovel that I could use and I would go out everyday and shovel sidewalks with him.

24:57 It was just something that that my dad always included.

25:07 Are you going to say about your mom or your dad will?

25:13 In 1969. I guess we really saw what my parents were made of because the 1969 Our Town flooded and we could only see our chimney.

25:26 In 1969. I broke my neck and the 1969. My mom had a nervous breakdown and my dad was a rock through the whole thing including now driving a hundred and some miles while b200 some miles a day to come see me every day in intensive care and I spent like I said earlier I spent two two good solid months in intensive care and then I was transferred to a rehab hospital and by this time I figured if I made only live 3 to 15 years. I really don't care about anything and that was when my mother said to me. You don't know how hard you made it on your brother. He's having to stay with your grandma and grandpa while we're here. He could be doing other things and then I started hearing about that. She could be doing other things. She had better things to do than sit sit around the house.

26:27 And so I told her to leave and she sent me on we arguing and I finally banned them from the rehab so I went through almost my whole rehab without my parents and I became almost a different person. I really didn't care what I said what I did who I said, it has been dealt a bad hand and I had people totally total strangers orderlies Maids nurses doctors who would commit up in the evening on their own time and say you want to go out and have a beer or do you want to go out for a while? If you want to go track meet you want to go to a basketball game and I made all these friends and I thought it can't be that bad.

27:17 And so just about the last couple months that I was there. I allowed my parents and they came up and said we're going to take you home for Thanksgiving and it was them that they said now you can't move it move back to mine. Because if someone saw you they would think your parents should be taken care of you and they're not here. And so she didn't want me seeing and she was back up to my neck my heritage.

27:53 I'm by my grandfather was full Irish. My great-grandmother on that side was full German. So they would say that that makes my mom both bullheaded and stubborn and so they my grandmother and she would go for three months three months three years not talking over some simple thing. Like my grandma bought my dad a I luncher or a meal or something like that without her approval on it. And so let me back up to where I was going with that.

28:34 Grandma coming back to the house yet when you coming back to the house.

28:40 Thanksgiving, oh, okay. And so just prior to that a nurse would come in in the rehab was across the Student Union building at the University of North Dakota. The nurse would go over and always get ice cream cones or whatever and she say what do you want Larry and I said get me a pack of cigarettes and she say, you know, you're not allowed to smoke and I say okay the nothing and one day she brought me a pack of cigarettes. So that evening I was laying in bed and I know I can have a cigarette so I put my buzzer on to have someone coming light it and heard this to Chichi Chichi. What do you want a little short tiny woman with hair with a my bed. It was rude and I said I want you light my cigarette. I don't play with matches. I don't play with fire. I worked in the Burn Unit milk. She walked away. I put the light on two more times same thing. I pulled the light out of the wall and it rang like a

29:40 Fire alarm in the hospital the nurses came running in and they said why won't you light a cigarette and she said well, I worked in the burn unit.... And they will light your cigarette. That's not a problem. And I said to her I hate you. I hate you. I never want to see you again that weekend that same lady. I've never seen her before she work midnight shift that same lady came into my room and said Hi, how are you? And I said get out of my room get out of my room. And so one of the little girls Mary sandback, she was the sixth grader had bad rheumatoid arthritis. Give me she's wanting to decorate my room with a fashion magazine models and

30:40 Walking behind her but that lady and I saw you I couldn't kick her hell with Mary. They're okay and it turned out that she stopped up on the day. My folks came for Thanksgiving. They said my mom not wanting anybody to be upset. So you want to come and she's the one I don't have Thanksgiving in from Canada and sat there and she also gave me at Christmas and New Year's Eve. She said we might as well get married. We're going to get married. Anyway, I said okay in a year, that's fine. And when we got back to the rehab she said change my mind we're getting married in six weeks.

31:30 And I got drunk for two weeks and we got married and I married her until she died 29 years later.

31:38 My mom because the world was totally inaccessible there were no wheelchair ramps there were almost no elevators anywhere in in our town at all. We had snow we had ice now you can really do anyting dad and your mom would say Willis go ice skating in a wheelchair and everything came back. So and so we figure out a way she wanted an ice skating rink in the park that was let up to our door. And so I agreed with the goalie from the hockey team that we pour ice rink, and she's so don't forget to call a ramp up to the door so we can get back in the house. And yeah just off-the-cuff. She never saw me as being disabled news.

32:38 Another step in the in the picture, but she stayed by me for 29 years and she was in a nursing home for two days. But she loved you more than anything in the world and Fiona her granddaughter. I can't imagine what you would think about her. I'm sure she would have loved to meet Fiona heard you and Mom were naughty and she helped you escape the rehab. Oh, yes. We did. That was just the beginning of January and she sent

33:29 Brenda Bridget and Bridget said don't say anything Bridget was made at the at the rehab another one who stayed friends even till today and she said don't say anything. I'm going to help you get dressed. We're going to leave I said where we going. I got an apartment and you're getting out and so we did and as we went through they said where you going we're going outside they laughed but it wasn't that funny because I had escaped three how many times would go out and and someone say just meet me in the back door and then they would get upset cuz I came in it was raining and muddy and I was dirty and that's fine and they just laughed about it and we got loaded up in the car went to this apartment. And at midnight I was sitting there with him and I said, I think I take Midnite pills.

34:30 And they said what are you doing? I called the nurses station. They said get your butt back here and I still not coming back and they knew me and so they sent someone over with pills and that was the start of my life. I'm right there and I had a whole life of people saying you can't do this. You can't do that. There's a reason why there's a reason why there's also similar reason why we could and your mom never took no for an answer whether it had to do with my disability or me or anything else comes up. So the rehab did they just

35:14 Don't think that you should live independently body and then they put you in a nursing home. And if you remember it if you remembered the war was going on 69 was the biggest year of the war in Vietnam guys coming back. They don't want to live in a military place. They don't want to live in a nursing home. There were people like me and so the Voc Rehab counselor. So what do you want to do and I still can't work with my hands. So I guess I have to go to school. So I spent four years going up 94 steps down 94 steps down twice a day having someone pulled me and I only had five Falls five broken legs and ankles and arms.

36:14 And we came out here and I saw Hills. We don't have Hills North Dakota. It's all flat and so I couldn't really wheel around and anyway, we worked it out. I was driving at the time and I would have someone help me in and out of my car. And then we were going to leave and work on my doctorate at a different University and we got there they claimed it was completely accessible except for four buildings before buildings. I need it. I want to teach in the library to others and so we came back to WSU and I worked on my doctors for Ed counseling and at that point I got called to from the governor's office at and Washington because they had started a new.

37:05 Public law for the protection and advocacy of developmentally disabled individuals, and they wanted me to open up a east coast East Side and state advocacy system, and I I was going to be a psychologist. I had I didn't have time for this and of course it meant to advocating for more rights and disabilities and I fell on my way there and I work there for a couple years and then I started school again and and at that point we were heavy into the lobbying for disability rights as what came of it and 91. We went from 91 to 89 working on getting a d a pass there 11 of us and we were told by Jesse Jackson Ted Kennedy that we needed.

38:05 Coalesce and we did and I went to the now I went to the National Jewish Defense League to coalesce and we eventually had to meet with George Bush because he changed his mind was going to find it. I'm we convinced him and he did sign it and he just didn't know that there were that many disabled people out there. And so anyway, that was my involvement with disability rights and that never ends it never ends because I serve on Mayer's committees Governors committees presidential committees all addressing issues with disability Bible Mark more work to be done all the time where we set the foundation. That's a proud thing in my life. I am most proud of my daughter my granddaughter and then after that I'm probably most proud of

39:05 My work in probably 20 other people Primary in the in the United States pushed us to accepting disabilities. You didn't see a disabled person in public prior to my leaving the rehab should you push the independence model not the institutionalized.

39:27 Most important life lesson you want to share with myself or Fiona for the world?

39:36 Oh never give up never give up things when you think it's comfortable, you know, you're doing something wrong. All right, and I always make friends with a great.

39:57 Thanks. I'm afraid advice.