This is All Things Considered for NPR News.  I'm Korva Coleman.

One of the champions of the Americans with Disabilities Act has died.
Justin Dart, Jr. passed away today in Washington, D.C.  He was 71.  Dart
used a wheelchair after contracting polio as a young man.  Because of his
disability, he was denied a teaching license by the University of Houston.
Dart said later that while he worked on civil rights issues in the
mid-1950s, it never occurred to him that the disabled were due equal
treatment under the law.  In 1982, President Reagan appointed him to the
National Council on Disability where early versions of the ADA were
drafted.  His work continued in both Bush and Clinton administrations. 
He received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1998.

Lex Frieden is the presidential appointee to head the National Council on
Disability.  He says Justin Dart didn't like being called the founding father
of the disabilities rights movement.

LEX:  I don't think he liked the language of paternalism.  I don't think he
wanted to be viewed as a paternal figure in a movement where he regarded
his coworkers and friends as colleagues.

KORVA:  Justin was the son of a wealthy businessman and had wealth
himself and he was able to finance trips to all 50 states and gathered
testimony about the life of the disabled.  This was something, to finance
your own trip.

LEX:  Justin financed not one but multiple trips around the country and as
he went, he and his family unit, including his wife Yoshiko--they would
travel from one state to the next.  I think the first couple of times they went
around the country in an old pickup and stayed in motels.  And every place
they stopped, they would have a reception for people with disabilities,
family members and other advocates who lived in the community that they
stopped in.  Without that I think those around the country might have felt
somewhat apart from the action that ultimately occurred in Washington.  I
think his personal efforts to network with people, family members,
advocates was really vital to the process of understanding and learning
about it and ultimately passing the ADA.

KORVA:  At one point, he headed up a campaign to fight backlashes
against the ADA.  Can you tell us about that?

LEX:  Well, Justin was concerned that those who objected to the ADA in
the first place would take the opportunity with the passage of time to
question some of the advances created by the act and he was concerned
that some more judgmental members of the body politic would take issue
with people with disabilities having equal rights and I think he has
demonstrated that it is possible for the ADA to survive much longer than
some other bills that have passed with equal platitudes in the beginning.

KORVA:  Lex Frieden, how will you member Justin Dart?  

LEX:  I'll remember Justin as a visionary and I think his soul lives and will
continue to do so through many of the advances in society's treatment of
people with disabilities.

KORVA:  Thank you very much.  

LEX:  Thank you.

KORVA:  Lex Frieden is the senior vice president of The Institute for
Rehabilitation and Research.  His appointment to head the National
Council on Disability is currently pending.  He spoke with us about the life
of Justin Dart, Jr. the champion of the ADA who died today in
Washington. He was 71.