Elmer C. Bartels Papers

Background on Elmer C. Bartels

As the Commissioner of the Massachusetts Rehabilitation Commission for thirty years, Elmer C. Bartels became a national leader on issues related to vocational rehabilitation and independent living for people with disabilities. Bartels himself was a quadriplegic as the result of a spinal cord injury at the age of 22. After his rehabilitation, Bartels and his wife, Mary, went on to live lives devoted to securing disability rights for all.

Bartels was a lifelong citizen of New England, born the third of four children on June 10, 1938, in Newton, Massachusetts, to parents Elmer and Dorothy Bartels. Dorothy (née Burnett) had been a dressmaker before marriage, and Elmer senior was a renowned thyroid specialist at the Lahey Clinic in Boston. Bartels spent his childhood with his three sisters Jane Lee, Patsy, and Dorothy. From 1950-1960, beginning at the age of 12, Bartels spent summers at Camp Agawam in Redmond, Maine, first as a camper and later a counsellor. Bartels remained an active camp alum and advocate for the rest of his life, donating time and resources to Agawam to ensure campers of all abilities could have the same positive experience he had benefited from so greatly.

After high school, Bartels attended Hebron Academy in Maine for one year before entering as a freshman to Colby College in Waterville, Maine. At the age of 22, while studying physics at Colby College, Bartels broke his neck in an inter-fraternity hockey game on December 5, 1960. His spinal cord severed at the C4/5 level, meaning he was paralyzed from the chest down with limited use of his upper arms. Following his injury, Bartels was moved to the Deaconess Hospital Intensive Care Unit for a laminectomy, next to the Spinal Cord Injury Center, and finally the Robinson Building, nicknamed "Robby Seven," at Massachusetts Memorial Hospital for rehabilitation.

In six months, Bartels was ready to continue his rehabilitation at Lemuel Shattuck Hospital in Jamaica Plain, Boston. It was there, out of a life changing injury, that a life changing love story, and a lifelong disability activist partnership, would bloom. Bartels met nurse Mary Foster on his first day at Shattuck in June of 1962. They married the day he was discharged from the hospital, on January 21, 1962. With Mary's undying devotion as a wife, skill as a trained nurse, and work as a co-student, the couple spent their first few months of marriage in Waterville, Maine living in motels and commuting to Colby to complete Bartels' undergraduate degree in physics in 1962. Bartels continued on to earn an MS in physics at Tufts University. During the Tufts years, the couple welcomed their first child, Joanne. They later adopted their son, Elmer James, in 1972. Bartels noted in 2005 that, "for Mary, no problem was too big. We charged into life without planning it, but with a lot of faith that somehow or other it would work — and it did."

While working as a computer programmer at the Laboratory for Nuclear Science at MIT, and later at Honeywell, Bartels became involved in coordinating services and access that members of the community needed to survive. His early work with computers and training programs in the 1960s inspired Bartels' early reports about computerized vocational rehab and training for people with disabilities. To address the range of issues relating to employment, housing, and architectural barriers for people with disabilities, he helped found three significant organizations: the Massachusetts Association of Paraplegics (1964), the Massachusetts Council of Organizations of the Handicapped (a cross-disability organization created in the late 1960s with Harold Remmes), and the Boston Center for Independent Living (1972). Bartels was a key figure in securing passage of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, considered the first civil-rights statute for persons with disabilities, and later the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990. In 1977, Bartels was appointed to the Massachusetts Rehabilitation Commission (MRC) by Gov. Michael Dukakis, serving thirty years under seven successive administrations, leaving an important mark on public policy. After leaving the MRC in 2007, Bartels remained active as a teacher and advocate for disability issues. Bartels passed away on July 5, 2014 at the age of 76.