To kick off our series highlighting the fight for the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act we have on NDRN’s founder and former Executive Director Curt Decker. Curt tells us about how the disability community came together to make sure no one was left out of the protections of the ADA and warns us about the downsides of helping getting major legislation passed in summertime in DC.

Full Transcript available at: https://www.ndrn.org/resource/ndr-curt-decker/

Jack Rosen:

I don’t know. I guess someone has to kick it off, right?

Michelle Bishop:

One of us should definitely be talking. How long have we been recording?

Stephanie Flynt McEben:

Like four seconds? I don’t know. It’s raining outside, y’all. It’s gross.

Michelle Bishop:

Are we just sitting here not recording?

Jack Rosen:

We’re recording.

Stephanie Flynt McEben:

No, we’re sitting here recording. We’re just not speaking.

Michelle Bishop:

Sitting here recording nothing?

Jack Rosen:

I guess-

Michelle Bishop:

We can’t put out dead air.

Jack Rosen:

We could. We could do a more experimental-

Stephanie Flynt McEben:

[inaudible 00:00:24 ] nothing and it’d be fine.

Michelle Bishop:

Experimental?

Jack Rosen:

Yeah, we could do a more experimental type of podcast. Maybe it’s like jazz, where podcasting is about the notes you don’t play. Is that what people say about jazz?

Michelle Bishop:

Is it? Just roll the opening. Welcome back to National Disability Radio. I am one of your hosts. Michelle Bishop, voter access and engagement manager at NDRN.

Stephanie Flynt McEben:

And I’m Stephanie Flynt McEben, public policy analyst with NDRN.

Michelle Bishop:

And our producer who keeps trying to sneaky call himself a host.

Jack Rosen:

Hi, producer and host. Really bit of everything. The workhorse of the podcast, if you will. Jack Rosen here. How are you doing folks?

Michelle Bishop:

Not the workhorse of the podcast. Okay. Okay, wait, so this is… We’re kicking off our ADA special?

Jack Rosen:

Yes. This is the first for our series of interviews with folks who were involved in fighting for passage of the ADA. And for this one, we have on an old friend. Michelle, you want to tell people who we have?

Michelle Bishop:

So for the very first in our series on the ADA, we actually have a good friend of the podcast, Curt Decker, who is actually the former executive director of NDRN. He actually founded the National Disability Rights Network in 1982 and led the organization for, what, 40 years? Yeah, yeah. About 40 years. Before that, Curt was actually the director of the Maryland Disability Law Center, which is the Maryland PNA. He was also the director of the Help Resource Project for Abused and Neglected Children. And was a VISTA worker prior to being a senior attorney for Baltimore Legal Aid Bureau. So Curt has deep roots in Maryland and the DMV and was our fearless leader for… Stephanie, were you here when… Did you-

Stephanie Flynt McEben:

I was very briefly. So I started in 2021, and then Curt retired in summer of 2022.

Michelle Bishop:

Okay, so every single one of us can say that Curt was once upon a time our fearless leader before Marlene Sallo took the helm of NDRN. So in addition to all that, Curt actually was instrumental in the creation and passage of the ADA and was on the White House lawn the day that it was signed. And he’s here today to tell us about that experience.

Curt, did you go to Hamilton?

Curt Decker:

Yes.

Michelle Bishop:

I did not know that.

Curt Decker:

Oh yeah. That was so weird about my life. I grew up in Albany, went to Hamilton. I got accepted to Brown, but frankly, Hamilton gave me more money. So I went to Hamilton. Money was an issue. And then I ended up at Cornell for law school and took the New York bar, came down to Baltimore for one year as a legal aid attorney and never went back, and then… Never practiced law in New York, a total waste of time to take the New York bar and they still call me now to… Please, I’m long gone. Anyway.

I did a couple things in Baltimore, got hired by Maryland Disability Law Center, [inaudible 00:03:37 ] it was called something else then. It was the very first iteration of the PNA system when it was only developmental disabilities. And then I helped… You know the story. I helped form the national association with a bunch of other execs around the country because there wasn’t anything. And then started going over to Washington because I was the closest guy there, maybe other than DC, and started representing at NAPAS it was called then, first as a volunteer, then as a paid consultant, then executive director.

Michelle Bishop:

What did you do when you were actually at the Maryland PNA?

Curt Decker:

I was executive director. I got hired. I was running a child abuse program for the state of Maryland. I knew people around. I got a call from one of my board members who was involved. She said [inaudible 00:04:23 ], “This new thing that just created by Congress called the Protection and Advocacy Systems, and it’s supposed to investigate abuse and neglect of people with disabilities, and we need someone to take it over and make it work.” And I said, “I don’t know anything about disability. I have no contact with the disability community at all. I never had a disability. I really didn’t have any relatives with it, so this is way…” And they said, “No, no, we don’t care. We need someone who can get this thing together and make it work.” The child abuse program was another federal grant. It was winding down, so I was like, “Okay, I’ll try it.” And I was lucky, it was right around when 94-142 came into existence, the Rehab Act. So I was like, “Oh, these are interesting legal issues. I never knew about this.”

And then I went out to Rosewood State Hospital and the director there locked me in the room, the day room, with a bunch of adult, folks with developmental disabilities and tried to scare me, and it was like… Fortunately, I wasn’t scared. It was a great story. I walked in, these men were there, they looked around, there was a new person in the room. So they got all excited and they started coming towards me and it was like, “Ooh, this is interesting.” And I smiled and they all smiled and it was like… What’s when I realized that these… We tried to close Rosewood. We finally closed it in 20… I think it was 2010. I started in 1979, and it took 30 years to close that craphole down. So when I was there, there were 3000 people at Rosewood, and then eventually we kept pushing and pushing and pushing. So yeah. It was called MAUDD, the Maryland Advocacy Unit for the Developmentally Disabled, MAUDD. And I was executive director for three years.

Michelle Bishop:

I actually did not realize you started as the executive director. More than 3000 people in a single institution.

Curt Decker:

Oh, Willowbrook was 7,000.

Michelle Bishop:

What?

Curt Decker:

Those places are big.

Michelle Bishop:

I did not-

Curt Decker:

Very big, very big. I think Willowbrook, We always tell that story in the history of the P&As, it was the largest facility for people with intellectual disabilities in the world, I think. And a nightmare. You’ve seen that video a million times, I’m sure.

Michelle Bishop:

[inaudible 00:06:33 ], yeah.

Curt Decker:

Anyway. Yeah, so then I started, I spent some time… I left Maryland, but I was… Were working for NAPAS, but part-time I had other clients. I had clients in Annapolis I was representing. It’s now called AAIDD, but it was called AAMR at the time. I was working part-time, I was working on the CAP pro