Valerie Vivona and Maureen Fitzgerald

00:04 My name is Maureen Fitzgerald. I'm 62 years old today is November 25th 2014. We're at the San Francisco Public Library and I I am going to be talking to Valerie and we've known each other for probably 30 years and we've worked together on a lot of different projects and we're friends.

00:32 My name is Valerie vivona and I'm 61 years old and today is November 25th. 2014. We're at the San Francisco Public Library and my relationship to Maureen is friends.

00:52 Okay. Well, let's start. My first question is why did you pick me to do this interview with you?

01:01 Well, I thought about that and I just remember it coming to Berkeley. So many years ago is like 19, I think 75 and you were one of the first people Maureen that I met and we were discussing tonight. We meet at the Women's Health Collective rcil are Center for Independent Living and I just remember our connection very fondly. I remember

01:37 As you said that we kind of showed up in the same place is a lot and also recently. We said that we both had ties to Staten Island. My grandparents were born in what lives in Staten Island and you live in Staten Island, which I thought was kind of funny and and I rent and we had a big break and are knowing each other some and we run into each other a lot recently. And this was on my mind and I thought you would be the only person to do this would then it's been nice reconnecting around the yeah, I agree. So how did you happen to come to Berkeley?

02:20 Well

02:23 I was in school at Hofstra University and it's a school that a lot of people who had disabilities went to because it was the only half the time wheelchair accessible school. There was like two or three in the country and one in Michigan or something. And and this is one of the very few and so a lot of us who I wrote my disability out of cerebral palsy and that some of the people that I knew from Hofstra hour of orchids, really that I knew from when I was about seven years old in special ed before all the laws got passed then things shifted and Judy heumann who is yuno world's known worldwide for her advocacy and her very hard. Legend work on disability politics and prose breakfast went to school with me.

03:22 Hi grammar school is on the school bus and then she moved out here with another friend and she wanted myself and one of my roommates from college to come and visit and so I came to visit we came to visit and it was just it was just like being in heaven always another world. I remember those lights fries on the freeway coming on the the van coming from the airport and always summer in California. How could you know there be trees and I came from which ryzen brooklyn-born in Greenwich Village and there was there was no association with trees in the city. So that's it started out and I used to motorized chair for the first time in my life out here and I had such freedom and had such fun and it was the seventies and valleys like wild times a little bit even in a week stay and and I kind of fell in love with it and the act the access and I thought

04:22 Even my friend and I she really wanted to come back out at the time and so a year later I did 21 units at the end of college, which may have been a mistake right pointwise, but we came at that time. She and I is roommate came back out here. It's a live.

04:41 That's how I got here. Okay, and what can you tell me about one experience that was just part of the fun that you had in your first trip when you stayed with Judy human, right? You stayed in her apartment. So, you know, it's a lot of partying and and and the fun of it was for me is that I was. I got to be in the independence of being in that motorized wheelchair. I just remember things like going down around the street and going to Top Dog and banks that that I you know, I'd really never experienced really doing on my own.

05:27 And it just was trying to mind-blowing for me. How did you get around before you use that motorized wheelchair?

05:36 Well, then started backtracking. I went to I walked with crutches and up to the point that I went to college. I

05:49 And then at that point I kind of gave up that the crutches because it was so much more practical for me to big fish at you and I was born in the 50s. So just see how briefly to say. It was the land of orthopedic surgery for kids that were disabled then a lot of exercise and and you know, it kind of messages like you're not all that handicapped at the time was the word and if you just work harder and try hard on you all this somehow miraculously, you would not be disabled anymore, which you know, it doesn't do to offer the self-acceptance, please.

06:25 And then but when I went to college I and I didn't use the wheelchair a lot and that was really with the transition. Because I went from the crutches to the manual wheelchair and then

06:42 I got my power chair only at the last 6 months of being in school at the University. And so that's you know, it was just getting used to a power chair kind of after two way towards the end of school.

07:02 Okay, and what was your experience like in elementary school as a child with a disability?

07:14 Ice, I remember like I just remember it vividly. There was a PS 219 and all it's just so different now a lot in some ways. It's probably somewhat the same but the log has made it look substantially different in certain ways, but at that time it was all the all the kids with disabilities. You went to the first grade together. Then you went to the next room for the second and third grade. Then you went to the 4th grader something and then the fifth and sixth of the Windows 7 and 8th grade was in one of them over the teachers. Remember the kids are never what we had in the lunchroom. I remember the only time we were integrated with Able Body children was in the assembly on Friday.

07:56 I remember mr. Joya Santa have to pee and her was doing Mary Poppins songs or whatever it was and there were just very very strong bonds with those folks with the kids that I went to school and it was a time before any kind of like School Aids or assistance for attendance in school or you know the right to services and support in school. So our mother is would be the ones that would come in a day or two to the school and we can do the whole that support thing for the kids physical support. So that's like an Indian of yesteryear a different world different world.

08:41 So how did that change by coming to the Bay Area and living in the Bay Area experiences?

08:55 You know talk to people like Ed Roberts who worked hard to make these fee. He campus accessible and get the kind of supports that people needed to live on her own if they were in school or out of school in the community first time really learning what the word accessibility meant in terms of the places you moved to to live in terms of work in terms of I just getting around

09:27 I had an experience that I know we both had was what is why I think it's where we first encountered each other was at a place called The Women's Health Collective in Berkeley. And I volunteer there once were there like orientation and training program for must have been close to a year to do these roles that I could not even imagine cuz I always had an event on house. I'll always was interested in it to be to do these like a gynecological exams and Laboratory Testing and assisted front desk and and and the women were so often and nurturing and support of an inclusive. I think the word that comes to mind a lot as inclusive. Berkeley was just inclusive.

10:17 So they were really happy to have a person with a disability involved as a probably learn from really to learn from you. And that was great and I learned so, you know so much to do about Healthcare and the non-medical model which is we always talk about disability the non-medical model, but that's true in a lot of sex is as well.

10:42 Find Community like that.

10:46 I am

10:50 It was great. It was just

10:54 It's like we don't want experience built on another experience and felt on another experience and I guess it just made me more conscious it made me. I think I grew up a lot. Like I was home a lot and I had made me more conscious of what other people's lives were like and what other people's feelings were like and and experiences and I just made me feel more I guess a part of the world is all I can get it feel like you weren't. Well did it feel like people weren't trying to fix you anymore. Yeah. I think that's a good point. I think there was a lot of acceptance cuz everybody, you know, it was the seventies it was Northern California was Berkeley and there were all kinds of different people being all around and I didn't, you know come from Dad growing up in the fifties and just where we were so it was

11:54 Yeah, it was a lot of the acceptance that I received from other people started to trickle in so it's some levels of self-acceptance which was great and that I could do things the things that you know like this experience with the Women's Health Collective.

12:08 Do you want to talk about some of the other jobs that you had or other places that you?

12:15 That you've been part of war or projects that you worked for. I guess I've I always

12:26 Like to do my favorite kinds of work is is to develop programs that if I have any kind of creativity and it has to do with I love the idea of program development and curriculum development and teaching and that kind of thing. So I worked on projects along the way jobs along the way that were had to do with the kids rights in school had to do with Community Healthcare Services Clinic services for people with different kinds of disabilities.

13:01 I did a

13:04 Actually two difference in times in my work life. I worked at the world Institute on disability and they were the Forerunner of they were the Primo place that took on the topic of personal assistant services for people with disabilities both nationally and internationally and I would got to be a part of that and work with some very fine conscious people and learn to see that needing help was not like a burden but it was something that wasn't your right and the society so I felt that that work was

13:43 Even though early on I probably didn't need as much kind of sport as I leave. Now. I felt like that was just kind of extraordinary to be involved in that. Are you the most proud of

13:58 Well work-wise around like I said was so late.

14:06 1992 to 2006 are like that. I did a project for a 6 or 7 years at a place called East Bay Innovations, and it was a project to

14:20 It was an idea that I had that people young people at the high school AF High school-age developmental disabilities.

14:30 And maybe plus physical disabilities of all different kinds people with Down Syndrome people with Autism people with CP broad spectrum of abilities that people had that they could learn a lot from having adult mentors with all different kinds of disabilities. And so I dragged all my friends and I said don't you really want to work with these kids and do this? And so we created this project we went after funding for it to have these classes on all different topics related to people transitioning from living at their parents home for us to living out in the world and working to the field farthest capacity that they could go give him whatever support that they needed and I loved it. I just adored it and it was like raising. I don't have children. So it's like raising a baby, and funding at a certain point ended for that. And so that was

15:30 Yeah, but that's what I'm most proud of will help you. It's a lot to be proud of how did all of your experiences and choices that you made reflect your values.

15:45 I probably I know we talked about this a little bit earlier. I'm not a crowd person. I'm not ik I'm not sort of a big crowd person. I don't like large parties or a big scenes of people saw a lot of my choices in life and terms of even relationships are I have some close friends and I like to spend time with them and have of cars over the years much more of a one-on-one kind of person.

16:17 And I like to think of myself as as creative. So I think the sum of the went went possible that some of the work that I've done.

16:29 I sort of reflected that kind of creativity. I like trying to find solutions to things alternate ways of doing things help people do that. I guess in the end those wise in my Valley.

16:44 What are some of the challenges and Graces that you find with aging? Oh, no.

16:55 Well, that's the challenges part is sort of the elephant on the table is that I certainly need more help physically than I used to need and the day-to-day that that is challenging because it involves a lot of you no help from other people and and I would not have it any other way in terms of keeping my Independence. But if it's hard it's all right then and then the body just like everyone's body as it ages. You see your ability to do things or you here comedian say and I used to have these injuries from playing tennis or climbing up mountains. And now I turned on the couch on my lazy boy chair and I and I on the other night from Jay Leno threw my back out every time I had somebody say that I think I'll yeah and then with the disabilities would have most imply that

17:55 But I think one of the good Grace to Grace is having to do with this is that it turns a nature that you don't get it all at once like I see your body is changing but you sort of have some time to transition. Hopefully. Luckily. I see that was friends of mine too and to the next phase of things and it's like, okay I could do this, but now I need some help.

18:24 And then I guess the rest about aging the rice part is that you're you're not quite as careful about what you say or worried about the consequences of it and sometimes that works sometimes you say but you don't really care something and that's kind of what kind of free if you excuse for your to be yourself. Yeah, exactly. Is there something that you would like to leave behind for your friend family and friends sort of gift to them?

18:59 I am I have wanted to do this thing where I I I like to make people laugh. I think I've been known for that expense of humor. I had kind of a dry sarcastic since you went away, but sometimes it's silly sense of humor. The dry sarcastic part is fairly for my father Italian father was kind of that way and I thought I heard of it and I would love to do a film where they're just clips of people that I know laughing and how one would do that, you know, I guess you could do it if it wasn't.

19:38 Technically, but the following even you could do a 1/4 adapter fit absence to make the following doable, but it somehow to put that together because I can visualize and I can hear and see it and and so I have to start about the people in my life that are filmmaker tides to to do something like that. I don't know if that will ever happen, but I will put it on this for posterity.

20:04 Well, it sounds like a project that doable. How would you like people to Remember You?

20:15 I would say kind and probably funny and that.

20:22 You know, I probably I want to talk less than sign and more than others. But that I've whatever I had started set out to do. I have given, you know, I always give it my best shot. That's what wine with that Quest.

20:37 Okay. Is there anything else you'd like to add know? I'm happy to be here with you and to be doing doing this.

20:47 Okay. Well so we switch.

20:58 You welcome.

21:09 So I will ask you how did you happen to come to Berkeley?

21:14 I was a recent graduate from college and I was looking for a job in I lived on Staten Island and I was looking for a job and I've gone to it a lot of disappointing job interviews and I had one in Manhattan and on the way back. I rode the Staten Island Ferry on my way home and I ran into a high school friend my friend Vanessa, and she was attending UC Berkeley and she had just travelled cross-country with her boyfriend at the time. And so she said why don't you come visit me in Berkeley in it. At first I thought that I can possibly do that, but then I realized that

22:06 Since I didn't have a job, I could go pretty easily and I had a little money saved up from a summer job. So I thought it well if I don't go now I probably won't be able to go so I had seen an ad in the Village Voice for trips cross-country trips from Manhattan to San Francisco and it cost $65 and the name of the company was Star Trek vans. So they charged $10 extra if you had a pet so I had a dog. So the. My brother dropped me off at the meeting place and Manhattan and he gave me some advice to let people think that the dog was dangerous but renting it was a 6 month old puppy and and so the van took off and it took two and a half days and it was actually heading for San Francisco.

23:06 But I had no idea where I was but the pit some of the other people in the van. I think there were eight or nine of us knew that we could go through Berkeley so they dropped me off right at my friend's house and they popped me down there. So originally I plan to stay for a couple of weeks probably but after a couple of weeks, I felt like I hadn't really seen anything and it was November and I thought the weather is really going to be terrible to go home and I was enjoying the weather and my friend had lived in the house with it was the tea there were two other women. There were three of them they were looking for a fourth roommate. So the roommates kept coming in to be interviewed and they didn't like any of the applicants. So then I decided to apply and they even though I'd lived with them for two weeks. They interviewed me and they

24:06 Accepted me and my dog to be the fourth roommate and I think our rent was I paid a little bit less because my room didn't have heat and I think I paid $65 a month for my room.

24:23 In Berkeley with right on Fulton Street in Berkeley.

24:28 So that's how I came that sounds like an adventure on the Yeah Yeah Yeahs.

24:42 What was your what was your experience with disability before you came to California? I had almost no experience with disability. I didn't know anyone. I didn't have any family members that were disabled and I didn't know anyone there was one young girl that went to my church. That was very visible because she used crutches and she she was the only one in church that did were in my life at that time that had a physical disability and I would sometimes on the stereo see deaf people who were selling ABC cards as Peddlers, but I didn't really know them. I just observe them and my mother took me when I was about 10, I think my mother took me to see The Miracle Worker about the story of Helen Keller and that really touched me at the time but my personal

25:42 Experience with disability with very limited and how it's that changed when you came here and he hasn't quite a bit. I threw one of my roommates at the house that I lived in so I was 20 something at the time. This was in 1974. I came to Berkeley 1974 and one of the roommates not not my high school friend, but one of the other roommates was working on a project that the Center for Independent Living with setting up the computer Technologies program at that time. It was called the computer training program and so through that friend. I had got an interview at the CPP. They didn't hire me, but I got referred to another opening at the Center for Independent Living and they did hire me so my job was working at the front desk I started out.

26:42 The phone I was mostly a receptionist but at that time.

26:47 The title receptionist didn't really include everything I did because I helped people go to the restroom my I did.

26:58 I fix the fax machine by later did when the Center for Independent Living moved to Telegraph Avenue. I wrote grants. I did a wheelchair repair and for a short time I did Realty repair and I had constant connections with people who had disabilities all different sorts of disabilities. So that was really a mind-expanding experience for me. And I think we might have met at the Center for Independent Living though. I don't remember if it was quite a while ago. So and so while I was working there really everyone did everything it's and it wasn't very segmented. Like now the jobs are very distinct, but at that time anyone could be called on to do anything I traveled with Judy heumann when she needed a personal attendant on a trip to

27:58 Attend ECU New York. I went to well whatever they need it I went to and while I was there I met Dale doll who was a deaf person who came to Berkeley to go to the computer Technologies program, and he was coming to the Center for Independent Living to find attendance. He was born deaf, but he had a car accident when he was 24 so that he became a partial quadriplegic. So he use the wheelchair he was he had a spinal cord injury, but he did have he wasn't a total quadriplegic that we did have use of some of his left hand and his left side wasn't as affected by their deal came and he used to sign language and I was learning sign language.

28:58 So he was my person to practice with so we started doing things together and then we started dating and then and then we started living together. So then I had an experience of living with someone who used a wheelchair and also whose native language with sign language and

29:21 So from going from not having any experience with disability. I suddenly had experienced a lot of different sorts of disabilities.

29:33 And I remember that time too and knowing you a little bit during that. How did the choice is an experience that you've had in you during your your life and lyrics piano you're still stay here and in California Long stay in California. How does that reflect your value is? Well, I think I'm also a person that kind of introverted and quiet but I have always been a social justice person and I never really thought about social justice in the area of disability rights, but

30:16 I was a strong peace activist and I tried to support causes of people that were fighting for rights in different areas. So the disability rights movement with really hot at that time, so I kind of jumped in.

30:37 And I am always fails to say that always felt like you didn't a lot to contribute just by who you are and and and that your belief system about how she'll just as he was like, it's not just something that said it's like you live at

30:55 Let the record show. What are you the most proud of?

31:01 When projects that just sort of fell in my lap with working at Yosemite National Park, I went to Yosemite Dale and I traveled to you somebody I just for a fun vacation and was my first time there and we rented a van and had to use a plank so that he could get in and out of the van and we slept in the van in a in a campground and then later Dale was invited to be part of a disability awareness program at Yosemite and so I went along with him to that program and they were very interested in making you somebody National Park more accessible. So with some encouragement from a woman that was working on that project Donna Pritchett.

31:59 I wrote a letter and asked if they would like the L&I to come to work on accessibility for a deaf disaters to the park. And at first when I brought the letter it wasn't accepted but then there was another training program and they were really ready to do that, but they didn't invite both of us and fortunately they didn't invite Dale they just invited me to work there and I I started I helped to set up the program of deaf services and it just celebrated the 35th anniversary of Death Services at Yosemite and Dale came. I think five times this Summer that I was there. He came he got his own van and then travel back and forth and was very helpful in advising and bringing other deaf people so that we could show that the services were really used and appreciated. That's a great but I knew what to do at a time you attended that recently.

32:59 Yeah, I went to the 35th Anniversary and there were about a hundred deaf people there and it was really wonderful celebration and one of the administrators Lynn McKenzie who was very supportive of the program. He is now retired, but he came and he spoke about how proud he was of that project and how we got to fight for it and Dale has since died. So he wasn't there and Donna Pritchard who also was encouraging has died. So she wasn't there but we had some of the interpreters that have been there for a while and Mary Ellen Lance who was another deaf women who had come to advise me about how to set up the project. She came and she's in her 90s. Wow. Yeah, so she we got a chance to say a few words and then deaf people share their experiences of Yosemite.

33:59 Was in her 90s. So the next question is what are some of the challenges and Graces that you are experiencing with age. So I guess one of the challenges is that I still feel like I have a lot to do but I get tired more easily by so it's hard to do everything and

34:21 I don't have a disability. I still don't have a disability but I do feel different parts wearing out. So we have to be more mindful of taking care of myself physically and I agree with you that I used to be very shy person and hard to a lot of times very hesitant to speak out and I also feel that now that I'm in my sixties. It's much easier for me to say anything and I don't have much and I would like the filter is off. So it is very freeing and I feel like it's much easier for me to say what's on my mind.

35:04 Is there something that you would like to leave behind for your friends and family and get high when thing I worked for many years as a sign language interpreter and which I enjoyed very much but after doing that for many years I started to feel that I didn't have my own voice. I always was saying with someone else someone else's thoughts. And so I stay I took a writing class. I took a writing class and and that morphed into taking a poetry class. So that started in about two thousand and one that I started writing. So I would like to compile what I've written and give that to people and I I brought one poem that I read it the Short Pump it's called.

35:57 Eating the cat. He never liked cats recoiled at the touch of cat fur, even the fur of the blue eyed white cat. It was so selfish of me to bring it home.

36:10 In a few weeks. I heard him talking to the cat in a soft voice when I asked him about it. He told me that whenever the cat me out. He said it and you get attached to what you feed what my father told me has been true of pet mice and goldfish a caterpillar teenagers and all of my fears.

36:35 Oh, that's great. Thank you. Have a great I think this is my best phone. I'm sure the other is a very relatable. Thanks for well. Thank you for this time together same here.

36:53 I have one. I think I want to work was okay with how would you like to be remembered? Oh, yeah. Well, I think that I would like to be remembered as a person that tried hard and was usually on time for them and try to help people.

37:17 Thank you.

37:20 I'm glad we did this to.