The Coronary heart of New Mobility

New Mobility has a beating coronary heart. I’m not speaking metaphorically. The guts is actual, and it belongs to Jean Dobbs, a girl who has devoted her life to nurturing the journal from its earliest years. Now that NM is transferring on from print, I made a decision to ask her about one thing that had been lingering in my thoughts.

TG: What drew you within the first place to {a magazine} about wheelchair customers with spinal wire accidents?

JD: In 1985 or ’86, earlier than New Mobility even existed, I used to be in school on the College of North Carolina in Chapel Hill and was the co-chair of the Starvation Motion Committee, engaged on native and international starvation points. The committee acquired a letter from a person named Bernie Jorn, a C4-5 quad and graduate scholar, who requested for volunteers to assist him eat lunch. As a committee we felt it was a incapacity difficulty, not a starvation difficulty, however two of us determined to assist him anyway. 

TG: How lengthy have been you concerned with him?

JD: What began as volunteer shifts developed right into a friendship. He was a couple of years older than me, learning rehabilitation counseling however mockingly going through discrimination and an absence of lodging from the college, like when he was penalized throughout a interval of pores and skin breakdown. He was laid up in his room rather a lot whereas he tried to heal, and we spent hours listening to Pat Metheny and speaking. He taught me in regards to the idea of unbiased residing and let me see how he did it — with attendants, a mouthstick, an previous ice cream truck that he had transformed to a wheelchair van. I ended up doing a photograph essay on him for a photojournalism class. Finally he rejected the UNC program and enrolled in seminary in South Carolina. He went on to turn out to be a hospital chaplain, get married and lift three daughters.

TG: A “meant-to-be” story?  

JD: That’s not all. The subsequent semester I took a category on the psychology of getting old, which had a practicum at a neighborhood nursing house. Our task was to get to know somebody there, go to them recurrently, then interview them for a ultimate class paper. As I wandered the miserable halls, a voice referred to as out from a resident’s room: “Hey, are you able to flip this cassette tape over for me?” I mentioned positive, and he invited me to take a seat down. His title was Thurman George, and he was a quad with no hand or arm perform who had been residing from a mattress for near a decade. He was there as a result of his spouse couldn’t deal with his care anymore, and this was the one means that Medicaid would pay for his fundamental wants. To me, he appeared stuffed with tales and life, however he was resigned to residing out his days in an establishment. He felt trapped, handled badly at occasions and noticed no means out. I discovered from each these guys about an important facet of the incapacity motion — the distinction between unbiased residing and being caught in a nursing house.

The “story of two quads” set the stage, in order that when the chance at New Mobility arose, Jean was prepared for it, not afraid. Since her first day in 1991, from behind the scenes, she has introduced her journalism coaching to each difficulty — whether or not about unbiased residing, physique picture, sexuality, healthcare equality, employment, accessible journey, incapacity artwork, civil rights, discrimination, relationships, parenting, recreation — the checklist goes on. Jean Dobbs’ management has been an important ingredient within the NM combine for many years. We — your complete group — owe her a well-deserved thanks for her decades-long sense of function, dedication and heartfelt dedication.

[Editor’s Note: Jean Dobbs retired as Publisher of New Mobility in May 2025, though she continues to consult as Publisher Emerita.]