When my father got older, he developed diabetes.  Back then, in the nineteen seventies, we didn’t have the medications and technology they use now, and my dad had his left leg amputated at the knee.  A couple years later, he had his second leg amputated and began using a wheelchair full-time.

Now, my father always loved to drive so he decided that he wanted to get hand controls on his 1972 Chrysler.  We found the company who did that and soon he had the controls on his car, making him very happy.  The next thing we needed to do was to get him a license to drive a car with hand controls.

At that time, the Department of Motor Vehicles was on Chestnut Street in the City of Rochester.  It was very, very inaccessible.  By that, I mean the department was on the second floor of the building, and the only access to the second floor in a wheelchair was by the elevator, but it wasn’t a public elevator.  You could only use the elevator with the help of the maintenance man.

We arrived at the Motor Vehicle office around eleven o’clock in the morning.  The entrance opened into a landing of a stairwell.  We could not get my dad up the stairs, so I went up to DMV to see how we proceed from there.  I spoke to the clerk, and she told me to wait in the hall downstairs.  They would find the maintenance man of the building to get us up to the second floor.  We waited for about an hour and I went up the stairs again.  Again, I was told they were going to notify the maintenance man, and again returned to my father to continue waiting.  Another hour went by.  By this time, we were all getting a little on edge.

It was humiliating for my dad to sit in the four-foot by four-foot hallway, watching people come and go, and trying to keep out of their way, while we were waiting for the maintenance man to come back from where ever he was.

For the third time, I went up stairs to get someone to help us.  I was told that they would send someone right down to take care of us.  We waited another half hour and a clerk from the Motor Vehicle Department finally did come down to check out the situation.  He spoke to us briefly and said that he would get right back to us.

Finally, the DMV staff come back downstairs.  They still couldn’t find the maintenance man and couldn’t use the elevator themselves.  There was no way to get us upstairs, so they gave my father a perfunctory eye test right there in the stairwell.  They told him he would receive his license in the mail.  I could not believe this.

I thought for sure he would need to take a driver’s test before being issued a license. I did not know many people back then who applied for licenses so they could drive with hand controls, but I assumed that it would be important for them to have a driving test before being issued a license!  Apparently, if you just waited long enough, they would just give you one!

I was glad that my dad got his license.  Being able to drive gave him a great deal of independence and was important to him.  And I will always very thankful that my dad did practice using his hand controls and was a safe driver.  But I was appalled at how he (and the rest of us) were treated at the DMV.

It felt like we were second-class citizens, and I guess we were.  We didn’t have many of the laws that we do today.  Since then, laws have required places to become accessible.  It’s important to enforce and defend these laws.