by Billie Jean Keith
If you met Eunice Fiorito at a conference or convention anywhere in the world, you could not forget her, or her voice. Within a few minutes, and in that operatic voice commanding attention, Eunice would find out who you were, where you came from, what you were doing there and then convince you to take part in one of the numerous advocacy projects she was heading.
And advocacy projects there were. Throughout her private life and professional career, Eunice was a diligent advocate and unabashed spokesperson for the rights of all people to be heard and protected — wherever they were and whatever their circumstances. When she died on Nov. 22, 1999, following months of illness, she was still serving as chair of the Alexandria Commission of Persons with Disabilities.
Born in Chicago, Ill. at the beginning of the Great Depression, Eunice Kathleen Frelly had only a slight visual impairment. However, she became totally blind by age 16 after being struck on the head by a baseball. She chose to remain in her high school to graduate, and was the first blind student to receive a bachelor of science degree at Loyola University. She received her master’s degree in social work from Columbia University in New York, and later took several courses toward a doctorate in health services administration.
In the early 1970s, Eunice and a group of disability leaders established the American Coalition of Citizens with Disabilities, and elected Eunice as the organization’s first president. In 1977, Eunice and other ACCD pioneers led a march on Washington, where they staged a three-day sit-in at the office of Secretary Joseph Califano in the Department of Health, Education and Welfare. They were protesting the delay in signing the implementing regulation for Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. Nixon had vetoed the act, and four years after Congress had overturned that veto, the Ford administration had not issued the regulation, and it looked like more delay from the Carter administration.
By then, Eunice had a national reputation for shaking the confidence of public officials with her ardent verbal confrontations. Eyewitnesses report that, toward the end of the sit-in, Eunice and Joseph Califano faced each other. In the voice so many remember, Eunice boomed, “Now Joe, you know what we’re here for and what you need to do.” Secretary Califano started to respond, but because Eunice was such a statuesque and imposing figure, he climbed onto his chair to be taller than she when he answered. A few weeks later, the 504 regulation was signed, defining the first federal civil rights statute for people with disabilities, and the model for the Americans with Disabilities Act.
Eunice, always the civic activist, was a founding member of Disabled People International, serving on its board for years. She was also a founder and board member of the League of Disabled Voters, and a very active member of the Washington, D.C. League of Women Voters. She chaired committees of the World Blind Union, and was a longtime member of ACB.
And then there was her professional career, jobs she was paid to do. Her professional positions included rehabilitation teacher/caseworker with the Illinois Department of Public Welfare; social worker at New York’s Jewish Guild for the Blind, where she helped to establish the nation’s first outpatient clinic for children with multiple disabilities; and Director of Psychiatric Social Work and Rehabilitation Services at New York City’s Bellevue Medical Center. Eunice’s lifelong interest in politics led her to organize and head the first Mayor’s Committee on the Handicapped during the terms of Mayor John Lindsay and later, Mayor Abraham Bean in New York City. She was the first person with a disability to receive the Outstanding Meritorious Service Award from the City of New York. While living in New York, she met and married James Fiorito.
Eunice joined the federal government after accepting a political appointment in the Carter administration, and moved to Washington, D.C. to work in the newly created Department of Education. For the next 19 years, she held a variety of advisory positions including Special Assistant to the Commissioner of RSA. At the time of her retirement, she was vice chair of the Department’s Task Force on Section 504 — the focus of the sit-in she had organized 20 years earlier!
Finally, there was the wonderful, generous hostess Eunice who presided at magnificent dinner parties in her beautiful home. Eunice held at least three such celebrations a year at Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s, and provided five-course feasts for 12 to 15 guests at each event. When Eunice ceremonially swept the old year out the door, accompanied by loud whoops and epithets, her neighborhood must have wondered if she was throwing out a poorly behaved dinner guest. Since winter was such a special time for Eunice, it seems fitting to quote a few lines from the winter solstice poem “The Shortest Day” by Susan Cooper:
“...As promise wakens in the sleeping land:
They carol, feast, give thanks,
And dearly love their friends,
And hope for peace.
And now so do we, here, now,
This year and every year...”
And though we say farewell to Eunice, clever, feisty, loving Eunice, her voice should never die.
(Editor’s Note: Eunice Fiorito’s family requests that memorial tributes should be sent to ACB for the Eunice K. Fiorito Advocacy Scholarship Fund. You may send those funds to the ACB national office, 1155 15th St. NW, Suite 1004, Washington, DC 20005. Please make sure to note that the money is for the Eunice Fiorito Scholarship Fund.)