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Lucy Gwin

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Lucy Gwin
A young white woman with blonde hair
Lucy Gwin, from the 1960 yearbook of Thomas Carr Howe Community High School
BornJanuary 5, 1943
Beech Grove, Indiana
DiedOctober 30, 2014
Washington, Pennsylvania
OccupationDisability rights activist

Lucy Gwin (January 5, 1943 – October 30, 2014) was an American disability rights activist. She published Mouth, a disability rights magazine.

Early life and education

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Gwin was born in Beech Grove, Indiana,[1] the daughter of Robert Willard Gwin[2] and Verna Bodine Gilcher Gwin. Her father worked in advertising and her mother was a teacher who later designed window displays for department stores.[3] She graduated from Thomas Carr Howe Community High School in Indianapolis in 1960.[4]

Career

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Gwin ran a restaurant in Rochester, New York and wrote advertising copy as a young woman.[5] She wrote a "strong and vivid"[6] memoir, Going Overboard (1982), about her year spent working on an oil rig ferry in the Gulf of Mexico.[7][8] She was working on another book, tentatively titled The Marriage Conspiracy, and lecturing on the subject of marriage, in the mid-1980s.[9]

Gwin was disabled following a car accident in 1989. The abuses she witnessed in her stay at a rehabilitation facility afterward fueled her concern for the rights of institutionalized people. The facility was eventually closed as a result of her efforts and the investigations that followed. In 1990 she began publishing Mouth, a disability rights magazine.[10][11] "She gave a place for what would be perceived as a radical disability rights voice, and she was fierce in that voice", explained colleague Bruce Darling in a 2021 article. "Everyone was a little scared of her."[7] She worked closely with photographer Tom Olin and writers Josie Byzek and Dave Hingsburger, among others.[10] Mouth ran for 109 issues, before it ceased publication in 2008.[7]

Gwin joined other disability rights activists in protesting the legalization of assisted suicide outside the Supreme Court in 1997, telling a reporter "I'm not going to die for Jack Kevorkian or anybody just because they think I'm not pretty to look at".[12]

Publications

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  • Going Overboard: The Onliest Little Woman in the Offshore Oilfields (1982)[13]
  • "Don't give us death by pity" (1997)[14]

Personal life and legacy

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Gwin married three times,[9] and had two children.[8] She died in 2014, at the age of 71, at her home in Washington, Pennsylvania.[15] There is a collection of her papers, including a run of Mouth magazine, at the University of Massachusetts.[1] A biography of Gwin, This Brain Had a Mouth by James M. Odato, was published in 2021, with an introduction by Nadina LaSpina.[3][16]

References

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  1. ^ a b "Lucy Gwin Papers". UMass Amherst Libraries, Special Collections & University Archives. Retrieved 2023-05-24.
  2. ^ "Yard Parks to Distribute Free Flower Seeds at Spring Program". The Indianapolis Star. 1954-03-14. p. 21. Retrieved 2023-05-25 – via Newspapers.com.
  3. ^ a b Odato, James M. (2021). This Brain Had a Mouth: Lucy Gwin and the Voice of Disability Nation. University of Massachusetts Press. doi:10.2307/j.ctv23khmxg. ISBN 978-1-62534-618-6. JSTOR j.ctv23khmxg.
  4. ^ Thomas Carr Howe Community High School (1960). Hilltopper. (yearbook). p. 117 – via Ancestry.com.
  5. ^ Frick, Robert (1986-08-29). "Advertising: Agencies call in the creative 'hit squad'". Democrat and Chronicle. p. 40. Retrieved 2023-05-25 – via Newspapers.com.
  6. ^ "'Middle Age', 'Overboard' new in nonfiction". The Anniston Star. 1982-06-06. p. 52. Retrieved 2023-05-25 – via Newspapers.com.
  7. ^ a b c Murphy, Justin (December 30, 2021). "Ten feet from a tornado: Rochester disability activist Lucy Gwin remembered in biography". Democrat and Chronicle. Retrieved 2023-05-24.
  8. ^ a b Snyder, Barbara (1982-02-25). "Today's Woman Has It Made, Author Claims". The Buffalo News. pp. C1, C5. Retrieved 2023-05-25 – via Newspapers.com.
  9. ^ a b Ashley, Dottie (1985-03-06). "Author wants marriage to be on an equal footing". The State. p. 17. Retrieved 2023-05-25 – via Newspapers.com.
  10. ^ a b Farrell, Mary Ann (1996-09-15). "Mouth is an angry voice for the disabled". The News and Observer. p. 105. Retrieved 2023-05-25 – via Newspapers.com.
  11. ^ Hughes, Mona (1998-01-22). "Magazine mouths off to tell disabled readers the truth". The Orlando Sentinel. p. 24. Retrieved 2023-05-25 – via Newspapers.com.
  12. ^ "Disabled protesters: No duty to die". Asheville Citizen-Times. 1997-01-09. p. 4. Retrieved 2023-05-25 – via Newspapers.com.
  13. ^ See, Carolyn (1982-07-06). "Book Review: Obnoxious Lucy Joins the Rigrats". The Los Angeles Times. p. 56. Retrieved 2023-05-25 – via Newspapers.com.
  14. ^ Gwin, Lucy (1997-01-08). "Don't give us death by pity". Corvallis Gazette-Times. p. 7. Retrieved 2023-05-25 – via Newspapers.com.
  15. ^ Brown, Steven E. "Remembering Lucy Gwin" Disability Visibility Project (November 10, 2014).
  16. ^ Nash, Indiana (2021-10-30). "Schenectady journalist spotlights disability rights activist Lucy Gwin". The Daily Gazette. Retrieved 2023-05-24.
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