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TextIn Remembrance of Martha Glennan
Martha Glennan was the founding mother of the Fairfax Area Disability Services Board and its first chairperson, starting in 1992. The DSB was grown from the county’s Disability Commission, which she also chaired. But her activities went far beyond Fairfax - in Richmond she gave testimony and worked behind the scenes to make things happen for people with disabilities.
When she had her home redesigned she offered to let people come to see that universal design can be beautiful. She was active in educating places of worship on inclusion of people with disabilities. She spoke at conferences for people with disabilities about accepting loss and moving through it. She pushed hard for the County to embrace the spirit as well as the letter of the ADA. She reviewed and commented on its first ADA plan and again pushed to have them make changes where they were needed. She was featured in the Washington Post as she took a reporter to the then new FDR memorial and showed that a person using a chair had major barriers to visiting a memorial to a president who had used one.
She was the founding mother of Project W.O.R.D., which grew out of her own experience of not being able to find any information about resources when she needed them. Project W.O.R.D. was a forerunner in developing a database of information for consumers, and was staffed by volunteers with disabilities who knew the issues first hand.
She was a member of the County's Long Term Care Task Force that
documented the needs of seniors and adults with disabilities and, when
the subsequent citizen-based Long Term Care Coordinating Council was
formed, she became co-chair of its Access Committee. The committee is now
working on the development of a statewide database of resources for
people with disabilities. Martha also offered Project W.O.R.D. as the
basis for a new non-profit, CareFaxLTC, developed by the Council to
educate and generate income for needed services in our community.
To many, Martha was known as "Ask Martha" because she had a
newspaper column on resources for people with disabilities. When she was
out and about, long after the column ended, people would stop to chat,
delighted to meet the person they had read and learned from. She had made
a personal connection.
Martha Glennan spent years as a teacher in the Fairfax County schools,
teaching the children of many of the community leaders whose doors she
would later knock on to enlist support for disability legislation and
other proposals. The high point for many of her students was the
"Electric Pickle" that she demonstrated to get students excited
about science.
And she was a teacher for many of us drawn to her intelligence,
political smarts and compassion. Martha didn’t just talk about things,
she made them happen. She would network, build alliances, make demands
and cajole.
Martha Glennan had a bumper sticker on the back of her chair that said "She who laughs, lasts." She meant it. She was a fun and caring friend.
She also was a woman of strong faith. Just last week she told a visitor that some people saw her life as a series of challenges, but that she only saw the blessings – a husband and children and grandchildren she loved, an opportunity to make a difference in the world, and so many true friends.
Many of us are fortunate to be counted in the latter. She will be missed.
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