Remembering Ken Ervin: 2007

Sunday, October 14, 2007

Please post your memories and links about Ken Ervin

I imagine many people around West Virginia, and around this country, and perhaps the world are feeling a million feelings from sadness and loss to celebration and liberation as I create this today, the day after Ken died. I am wishing we could all be together to swap great Ken stories and commiserate and cry a little and laugh a lot and vow to work hard for equality and dignity.

So here is one virtual place I hope we can do that.

Please Click Here to post as a comment on this blog.

Please feel free to post anything you want about Ken here, and if you want to post but are having trouble doing it please email Cat at justpeace at gmail dot com and I'll gladly help you post.

No Pity. by Ken Ervin

In the institution they told me
You have no more coordination than a common laboratory rat
That's what the disability industry sees - Disability.
They have to
Its how they make money
So they say
You will never hold a job
You will never read for pleasure
You will have trouble adjusting socially
Well, they got one right
But I am a man
and a father
with a freaking Master's degree and everything
and all they see
is the disability.
Disability is a social construct
It protects people from their fear
that we are the same.
Just one car accident away
In a war of attrition
I will always win.

Scott Finn"s WV Public Radio story about Ken"s death

Listen to it at http://www.wvpubcast.org/av/1016wvm2.mp3

W.Va. Disabilities Advocate Dies at 45

By Scott Finn, West Virginia Public Broadcasting

Studio lead: West Virginia recently lost one of its leading advocates for people with disabilities. Forty-five year old Ken Ervin died Saturday of an apparent heart attack.

If you’ve spent much time at the state Capitol, you may have seen Ervin wheeling down the hallways – leading a protest or trying to corner a lawmaker or government official.

But you also could find him rolling down the hallways of a nursing home. He helped dozens of disabled people move out of institutions and back into their own homes.

His friends and colleagues say that Ervin wouldn’t want them to mourn his death. He would want them to continue his work. Scott Finn reports.

Finn: Joan Weldon says that Ken Ervin helped save her life. Two years ago, the 48-year-old Ravenswood woman was forced to move into a nursing home in Ohio. She needed to be on a respirator at night, but the state of West Virginia wouldn’t pay for it. Her only choices were move to another state, or die.

Weldon asked Ervin for help. Together, they badgered state officials and finally worked out a deal so Weldon could return home.

Weldon: And I’m just better off physically and emotionally at home. I can do things, I’ve got friends I can do things with now. I’m closer to family. I got my life back. I lost my life for two years, and I got it back, thanks to Ken.

Finn: Ervin worked at the North-Central West Virginia Center for Independent Living, and he was co-founder of Adapt West Virginia, a group that worked to move people with disabilities out of institutions and back home, whenever possible.

He was a noisy and unapologetic advocate. In 200x, he chained himself to a flagpole at Cheat Lake Elementary. He was protesting the decision to send a young boy named Tucker to another school because of his disability. At the time, he spoke to West Virginia Public Broadcasting about why he did it.

Ervin: Because Cheat Lake Elementary truly represents Tucker’s neighborhood school, best practice in the area of special education indicates that’s how inclusion works best, when you’re around people who live in your own neighborhood.

Finn: His friend and colleague, Scott Miller of Lewisburg, says that Ervin’s activism stems from his own experience with cerebral palsy. When he was 14, he was sent from Buckhannon to live in an institution in New Jersey. A few years ago, Miller drove Ervin back to that institution to revisit some old ghosts.

Miller: It was a closed facility, the first thing that struck both of us, we couldn’t get into the building, it was locked from the outside, and then we couldn’t get out. So the feeling of a prison was very strong.

Finn: Ervin rebelled at the facility. Miller says most of the workers there gave up on him – except for one staff member who taught him enough to escape.

Miller: He had been treated as if he couldn’t learn. He was very defiant. So they didn’t even try, they just assumed he couldn’t read, and couldn’t learn to read, and so they didn’t really work with him. One of the staff people just happened to connect with him, and helped him learn how to read. And he basically taught himself how to read. He is an incredibly intelligent…was such an incredibly intelligent man. And that spark of this man saying you can apparently made it happen for him.

Finn: Eventually, Ervin gradated from West Virginia Wesleyan and earned a master’s degree in rehabilitative services from West Virginia University.

He soon became well-known in disability circles for his persistence. Miller says that Ervin wasn’t afraid to make a nuisance of himself for a larger cause. For example, he basically stalked former Manchin Administration official Brian Kastick.

Miller: Ken would call Brian two or three times a day, and finally Brian sort of realized he better talk to Ken, and call him, because otherwise he’d be getting calls at 11 at night, or 7 in the morning. And one of the things that Ken really helped me with is, he never got angry with Brian or any of the folks he talked to. He was relentless.

Finn: That sort of dedication inspired Helen Panzironi, who went to school with Ervin and now works for WVU’s Center for Excellence in Disabilities.

Panzironi: He really changed my life. I was in graduate school and I thought I was going to be a counselor. And after being with Ken, I changed my vocation and ended up dedicating myself to working with people with disabilities and civil rights and human rights issues. He did that with a lot of folks.

Ken always was pushing me past what I thought my limits were. And I would just do it anyone, because he wouldn’t let up. He would say, constantly…today, I just wanted to take the day off, but I could hear him saying, “It’s about the work. It’s about the work. Use it.”

Finn: Ervin’s friends and detractors agree that he could be a bulldog in public. But in private, some of the things he saw affected him deeply.

Panzironi: This child who was in a nursing home had died, and he hadn’t gotten to him, and it just broke his heart. Ken was a dichotomy in the best sense of the word. It wasn’t like one side balanced the other, he was both at the same time. He was incredibly strong, but he was incredibly sensitive, and it just broke his heart.

Miller: I mean he would call me sometimes just crying. And this is something that I think most people did not know about Ken, they think Ken is this tough guy who could take about anything. But he got very emotional about the people he was working for.

Finn: Already, Ervin’s friends are planning how to honor him – with a new push to change state policy and help more people with disabilities return home.

For West Virginia Public Broadcasting, I’m Scott Finn in Charleston.

Remembering Ken Ervin

Sunday, October 14, 2007

Please post your memories and links about Ken Ervin

Ken Ervin

Ken and Robin

Portrait of Ken

Ken at work

Ken at Metheny

No Pity. by Ken Ervin

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Scott Finn"s WV Public Radio story about Ken"s death