Saturday's news reported that finally Audrey White was going to get a wheelchair ramp for her home.
Provided through "the kindness of strangers."
Audrey White is the 8-year-old girl much in the news last week due to her wheelchair having been stolen -- for scrap metal, as it turns out -- from in front of her home.
The reason her chair was outside, with no one around, allowing it to be stolen, is a story of the routine inaccessibility of most of Louisville's housing stock, including the house in Germantown where Audrey lives with her family.
Many -- probably thousands -- of wheelchair users in Louisville live in similarly inaccessible homes.
And this isn't the first time something bad has happened because of that.
And yet what was interesting to me about this news story as it unfolded last week was that, although clear that the reason the chair was unattended was because her mom was helping Audrey out of the house, with the chair sitting at the foot of the steps, no news story focused on the problem of the inaccessible home.
To be sure, the news story WAS the stolen chair. But the theft was to my way of thinking possible in the first place because of the inaccessible home.
As the week unfolded, the news turned, as it usually does with stories of this sort, to the "outpouring" of the community. The media surrounding the theft had prompted Teri and Steve Bass to donate a new $5,000 wheelchair for Audrey -- and that then became the story (here and here).
Which was fine -- donating a wheelchair is no small deed, and it's good to see folks help out.
But... -- and yes, for me there is always a "but" when I see stories like this -- but wouldn't it be swell if this community was so generous about access?
Finally, though, that too happened:
Audrey's story touched many in the community, including several who're working to build a deck and ramp onto the back of her home.
"I won't have to carry her and the wheelchair," White said. "It's going to make her life easier and my life, too."
Kelley Construction, along with several United Auto Workers members who work for Ford, plan to get started on the project next week. (Source: Girl's stolen, wrecked wheelchair recovered, CJ Dec. 1, 2007)
OK. That's great!
Now: what about those other thousand who have no ramps on their homes?
I'd like to see the CJ's Jessie Halladay do a story about that.
