California Coast & Ocean

In 1972, when Bonnie Lewkowicz was 15 and growing up in Detroit, she could pitch a baseball, skate, and play piano and guitar. Most of all, she loved to dance. She had studied ballet, tap, and jazz for ten years, preparing for a career on stage. Then, suddenly, all that was over.

She had been riding in an Amphicat all-terrain vehicle with three older boys, heading for a schoolyard to spin donuts. The ATV hit a bump on the street and flipped over. All four were thrown into the street. The boys were uninjured, but she landed awkwardly and the fall broke her neck. When she briefly regained consciousness, she couldn't move.

Four months of hospital misery followed. Lying flat on her back, she watched the Munich Olympic gymnastics on television, feeling that she might as well have been watching from the moon. When she came home she was paralyzed from the neck down, with limited movement in her arms. Her "strong-willed Jewish mother" fought to get her rehabilitation treatment, Lewkowicz said. Her father, an Auschwitz survivor, was devastated--to the point, she would later learn, that he wanted to kill both himself and his daughter. Yet it was her father's own suffering in the concentration camps that gave her strength then. He had been 13, not much younger than herself, when the Nazis took him and his family from their home in Boleslawiec, Poland.

"It was so much worse than what I had to deal with," Lewkowicz said, as she told her story in her greenery-filled kitchen in Berkeley. "Knowing that was a driving force for my stubbornness and desire for independence."

At first, though, she grimly resisted the changes in her life. Sharing few recreational interests with her older brother and younger sister, feeling stifled at having to stay indoors for days on end when it snowed, she was depressed. She hated going back to her ninth-grade class, dismissed wheelchair sports as not for her, and when her first motorized chair arrived, she cried. To her, it merely symbolized her helplessness.

That state of mind lasted about three years. By the time she graduated from high school, she had changed. "What turned things around for me was focusing on what I could do, rather than what I couldn't do," she remembers.

On her own, she set off for Johnston College in Redlands, east of Los Angeles, to study nutrition, then transferred to Santa Rosa Junior College because the smog was unbearable and because she wanted a school with services for people with disabilities. The stimulating college atmosphere reawakened her sporting instincts, and before long she was swimming a half mile three times a week and racing in 800-yard wheelchair competitions. By 1979, she had decided to pursue a career as a recreation therapist. In 1985, after more college classes at California State University in Sonoma and Chico, she received her bachelor's degree.

There was far less wheelchair access during her college years than there is today. Wherever she went--to a restaurant, store, or office building--she phoned ahead to ask if she would be able to get in or use the restroom. "Half the time they wouldn't even know what I was talking about," said Lewkowicz.

She found a job with the Bay Area Outreach and Recreation Program (BORP) in Berkeley. She organized wheelchair tennis matches, led outdoor adventures like skiing and rafting, and helped start the first California teams of quad rugby, a fast-paced sport played with wheelchairs and a volleyball on a basketball court. While working at BORP she also met Paul Church, a disability services specialist with the City of Berkeley. They are now married.

In 1987, Lewkowicz began dancing again. She and six others--three wheelchair riders, three not--formed the AXIS Dance Company, which choreographs modern dance pieces that use the strength and movement of the wheelchairs to facilitate a new form of dance. Their first performance, at the Oakland Furious Feet Festival, brought a standing ovation.

"What went through our minds was, were they clapping at 'those brave people up there' . . . or at good art?" Lewkowicz said. Eventually she decided it was the latter. Working with choreographers and musicians including Bill T. Jones and Joan Jeanrenaud, AXIS has performed on stages from Siberia to New York.

Today, at age 49, Bonnie Lewkowicz looks out at the world through dark, cautious eyes that light up as she talks. Her life is rich and busy. She founded and directs Access Northern California, a nonprofit organization serving travelers with physical disabilities, writes for travel publications, and is an avid gardener. When she undertook the task of writing A Wheelchair Rider's Guide: San Francisco Bay and the Nearby Coast for the Coastal Conservancy Association in 2003, she figured it would take 12 months. It ended up taking three years to explore and describe more than 100 scenic places, as she fit her field trips between rehearsals, performances, and travels beyond the Bay Area.

She drove to each area, alone or with a friend, in her Braun Entervan, a vehicle that kneels, opens its side doors, and unfolds a ramp in response to a remote control. To maneuver the van, she uses hand controls attached to the brakes and gasoline pedal. Sometimes her husband would go with her on weekends. A few times she went out with Brett Wilkison, one of the book's editors, who rode his bicycle.

In the book, Lewkowicz describes topography and various features of interest. She tells of good places to watch birds, picnic, stroll quietly along, or bring children. She details fees, hours, trail lengths, food, lodging options, and even weather patterns. She reports on parking: Is there a blue Handicapped Parking Only space? Is there an "access aisle" alongside the parking spot so a wheelchair can exit? She inspected each trail for barriers such as turnstiles or narrow passageways, as well as noting its condition. Was it firm, stable, and level, or was there gravel, sand, mud, or deep ruts? Armed with pen and pad and a tape measure, she poked around drinking fountains, restrooms, picnic tables, playgrounds, and docks and piers, checking to make sure they were accessible. In some areas, such as César Chávez Park in Berkeley, she was delighted to find picnic tables with the bench cut away to allow a wheelchair in. Many parks had restrooms with some combination of wide stalls, grab bars, roll-under sinks, and lever door handles, though few had all of these.

At times the going was tough. At the Don Edwards San Francisco Bay National Wildlife Refuge in Fremont, she found herself alone in the blazing heat, sliding sideways on a hill as her motorized chair struggled to get up a steep trail. In the Marin Headlands, on a coastal trail starting at Rodeo Beach, she encountered a locked gate with deeply rutted paths around it--impossible to navigate alone.

Yet the trips were often inspirational, even moving. On that same troublesome trail in the Marin Headlands, on a perfect summer day, she stopped to view the ocean below and the wildflowers around her. She listened to the birds, the surf, and a foghorn in the distance. "It was breathtaking," she said.

She came away from these explorations with a powerful awareness of the fragility of the coastal and Bay ecosystems and an appreciation of the farsighted citizens who saved the Bay and the coast from what at one time had seemed inevitable destruction by reckless development.

Her greatest surprise was "how much I found that would be manageable for people in wheelchairs." Access has improved considerably since the Conservancy published its first wheelchair rider's guide to this area, in 1990. Under the federal Americans with Disabilities Act, standards have been established for facilities including restrooms, entranceways, and drinking fountains. More specific rules on trails, beaches, and camping areas are currently under review by the United States Access Board, which makes recommendations (see "More Parkland Access").

All this is progress, but Lewkowicz hopes that, over time, the boundaries between those with mobility limitations and everyone else will dissolve as more architects embrace "universal design," a concept promoting buildings and parklands that don't require special handicapped access features. Access "does not have to stick out like a sore thumb," she says. For example, a wooden ramp edged by greenery can often replace outdoor stairs--and be used and enjoyed by everyone.

A pioneer in expanding boundries, Lewkowicz also hopes that the new wheelchair rider's guide will inspire others with wheelchairs or canes to do some pioneering of their own in the Bay AreaÕs diverse and often stunning recreational spaces.

Shirley Skeel's last article for Coast & Ocean was "Spartina Warrior: Katy Zaremba" in the Autumn 2004 issue.

	Bonnie Lewkowicz Wheelchair Riding Pioneer
	In 1972, when Bonnie Lewkowicz was 15 and growing up in Detroit, she could pitch a baseball, skate, and play piano and guitar. Most of all, she loved to dance. She had studied ballet, tap, and jazz for ten years, preparing for a career on stage. Then, suddenly, all that was over. She had been riding in an Amphicat all-terrain vehicle with three older boys, heading for a schoolyard to spin donuts. The ATV hit a bump on the street and flipped over. All four were thrown into the street. The boys were uninjured, but she landed awkwardly and the fall broke her neck. When she briefly regained consciousness, she couldn't move. Four months of hospital misery followed. Lying flat on her back, she watched the Munich Olympic gymnastics on television, feeling that she might as well have been watching from the moon. When she came home she was paralyzed from the neck down, with limited movement in her arms. Her "strong-willed Jewish mother" fought to get her rehabilitation treatment, Lewkowicz said. Her father, an Auschwitz survivor, was devastated--to the point, she would later learn, that he wanted to kill both himself and his daughter. Yet it was her father's own suffering in the concentration camps that gave her strength then. He had been 13, not much younger than herself, when the Nazis took him and his family from their home in Boleslawiec, Poland. "It was so much worse than what I had to deal with," Lewkowicz said, as she told her story in her greenery-filled kitchen in Berkeley. "Knowing that was a driving force for my stubbornness and desire for independence." At first, though, she grimly resisted the changes in her life. Sharing few recreational interests with her older brother and younger sister, feeling stifled at having to stay indoors for days on end when it snowed, she was depressed. She hated going back to her ninth-grade class, dismissed wheelchair sports as not for her, and when her first motorized chair arrived, she cried. To her, it merely symbolized her helplessness. That state of mind lasted about three years. By the time she graduated from high school, she had changed. "What turned things around for me was focusing on what I could do, rather than what I couldn't do," she remembers. On her own, she set off for Johnston College in Redlands, east of Los Angeles, to study nutrition, then transferred to Santa Rosa Junior College because the smog was unbearable and because she wanted a school with services for people with disabilities. The stimulating college atmosphere reawakened her sporting instincts, and before long she was swimming a half mile three times a week and racing in 800-yard wheelchair competitions. By 1979, she had decided to pursue a career as a recreation therapist. In 1985, after more college classes at California State University in Sonoma and Chico, she received her bachelor's degree. There was far less wheelchair access during her college years than there is today. Wherever she went--to a restaurant, store, or office building--she phoned ahead to ask if she would be able to get in or use the restroom. "Half the time they wouldn't even know what I was talking about," said Lewkowicz. She found a job with the Bay Area Outreach and Recreation Program (BORP) in Berkeley. She organized wheelchair tennis matches, led outdoor adventures like skiing and rafting, and helped start the first California teams of quad rugby, a fast-paced sport played with wheelchairs and a volleyball on a basketball court. While working at BORP she also met Paul Church, a disability services specialist with the City of Berkeley. They are now married. In 1987, Lewkowicz began dancing again. She and six others--three wheelchair riders, three not--formed the AXIS Dance Company, which choreographs modern dance pieces that use the strength and movement of the wheelchairs to facilitate a new form of dance. Their first performance, at the Oakland Furious Feet Festival, brought a standing ovation. "What went through our minds was, were they clapping at 'those brave people up there' . . . or at good art?" Lewkowicz said. Eventually she decided it was the latter. Working with choreographers and musicians including Bill T. Jones and Joan Jeanrenaud, AXIS has performed on stages from Siberia to New York. Today, at age 49, Bonnie Lewkowicz looks out at the world through dark, cautious eyes that light up as she talks. Her life is rich and busy. She founded and directs Access Northern California, a nonprofit organization serving travelers with physical disabilities, writes for travel publications, and is an avid gardener. When she undertook the task of writing A Wheelchair Rider's Guide: San Francisco Bay and the Nearby Coast for the Coastal Conservancy Association in 2003, she figured it would take 12 months. It ended up taking three years to explore and describe more than 100 scenic places, as she fit her field trips between rehearsals, performances, and travels beyond the Bay Area. She drove to each area, alone or with a friend, in her Braun Entervan, a vehicle that kneels, opens its side doors, and unfolds a ramp in response to a remote control. To maneuver the van, she uses hand controls attached to the brakes and gasoline pedal. Sometimes her husband would go with her on weekends. A few times she went out with Brett Wilkison, one of the book's editors, who rode his bicycle. In the book, Lewkowicz describes topography and various features of interest. She tells of good places to watch birds, picnic, stroll quietly along, or bring children. She details fees, hours, trail lengths, food, lodging options, and even weather patterns. She reports on parking: Is there a blue Handicapped Parking Only space? Is there an "access aisle" alongside the parking spot so a wheelchair can exit? She inspected each trail for barriers such as turnstiles or narrow passageways, as well as noting its condition. Was it firm, stable, and level, or was there gravel, sand, mud, or deep ruts? Armed with pen and pad and a tape measure, she poked around drinking fountains, restrooms, picnic tables, playgrounds, and docks and piers, checking to make sure they were accessible. In some areas, such as César Chávez Park in Berkeley, she was delighted to find picnic tables with the bench cut away to allow a wheelchair in. Many parks had restrooms with some combination of wide stalls, grab bars, roll-under sinks, and lever door handles, though few had all of these. At times the going was tough. At the Don Edwards San Francisco Bay National Wildlife Refuge in Fremont, she found herself alone in the blazing heat, sliding sideways on a hill as her motorized chair struggled to get up a steep trail. In the Marin Headlands, on a coastal trail starting at Rodeo Beach, she encountered a locked gate with deeply rutted paths around it--impossible to navigate alone. Yet the trips were often inspirational, even moving. On that same troublesome trail in the Marin Headlands, on a perfect summer day, she stopped to view the ocean below and the wildflowers around her. She listened to the birds, the surf, and a foghorn in the distance. "It was breathtaking," she said. She came away from these explorations with a powerful awareness of the fragility of the coastal and Bay ecosystems and an appreciation of the farsighted citizens who saved the Bay and the coast from what at one time had seemed inevitable destruction by reckless development. Her greatest surprise was "how much I found that would be manageable for people in wheelchairs." Access has improved considerably since the Conservancy published its first wheelchair rider's guide to this area, in 1990. Under the federal Americans with Disabilities Act, standards have been established for facilities including restrooms, entranceways, and drinking fountains. More specific rules on trails, beaches, and camping areas are currently under review by the United States Access Board, which makes recommendations (see "More Parkland Access"). All this is progress, but Lewkowicz hopes that, over time, the boundaries between those with mobility limitations and everyone else will dissolve as more architects embrace "universal design," a concept promoting buildings and parklands that don't require special handicapped access features. Access "does not have to stick out like a sore thumb," she says. For example, a wooden ramp edged by greenery can often replace outdoor stairs--and be used and enjoyed by everyone. A pioneer in expanding boundries, Lewkowicz also hopes that the new wheelchair rider's guide will inspire others with wheelchairs or canes to do some pioneering of their own in the Bay AreaÕs diverse and often stunning recreational spaces. Shirley Skeel's last article for Coast & Ocean was "Spartina Warrior: Katy Zaremba" in the Autumn 2004 issue.