A bout with polio in the 1950s left Barbara Toomer in a wheelchair. She turned it into a steamroller.
For four decades, Toomer was among the leading advocates for civil rights for people with disabilities and the poor in Utah, organizing the state’s earliest disabled rights organizations, fighting tirelessly for health care access, for handicapped accessible buses and buildings, for in-home care options, and on and on.
Toomer died Tuesday, at the age of 88, but not before her tireless work and dogged protests and decades of victories improved the lives of Utahns with disabilities.
“The issue the community as a whole is going to seriously have to reckon with is: Where does the next generation of leadership come from?